


Blood Ties

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: (closest thing I could find since there's no common tag for), (in that there is no sexual component at all and the description uses weird imagery -coughs-), (oh hey there we go that works), (only some people get them though), Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Needs A Hug, Evil Lana, Gen, Hospitals, Implied Mind Rape, Mindfuck, Mindwiping, Psionic Attack, Psychic Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood is thicker than water, and can be far more deadly. ...Like it or not, blood ties rule us all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Ties

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Blood Ties  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: pre-Clex  
> Rating: PG-13 / R for language  
> Spoilers: for the entire show; post-series -- very shortly thereafter, in fact -- but prior to the seven-year-jump  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Blood is thicker than water, and can be far more deadly. ...Like it or not, blood ties rule us all.  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd. General physical and mental violations of a lesser sort. And Mindfuckery-with-a-capital-M.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: I had writer's block, in that I couldn't sit down and just write what kept unspooling in my head (for several other stories). So I just decided to start from nowhere and tried not to care too much about whether it came out good or not. This is the result. I didn't know what was happening until I started writing. ...And then I put it down for months and finally picked it back up again under similar circumstances. Twice.
> 
> As in -- I started this in late November 2011. I wrote the second half of this in one fell swoop in May 2012. It is now May 2013 and I finally came back and edited it ...because I couldn't sit down and just write what keeps unspooling in my head. This time it's my fic Hostile Takeovers. This is my life. (FML. *headdesk*)
> 
> Note that this fic riffs off of a season-10 cutscene where Tess finds out from Dr. Lamell that Conner's DNA was (supposedly) half-Kryptonian _all along_. This fic kind of messes with that assumption, because it's pretty heavily implied that they only ran the test on Conner after the whole bent-needle thing, and didn't do genetic testing on Conner before then. ...In other words, I believe that Conner didn't have Kryptonian DNA until it was injected into him, much later, after Alexander 'reconciled' with Tess by way of Clark's intervention. This is because solutions derived from Kryptonian blood don't generally survive long-term close proximity to Kryptonite (for an explicit medical example, see the vial in 3x15 Resurrection), and the cloning process (from the tech that first created Emily Dinsmore) uses a shit-ton of Kryptonite -- there's just no way that would've worked out. Welcome to my headcanon. (Because, really guys, how much sense did _that_ make?)

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Lex crept up to the open window, his breath ragged. He swallowed hard and pressed his hand to the bullet wound on his arm again, wincing at the pain. It was better than passing out or bleeding all over the floor, rather than just down his shirtsleeve and into the cuff. 

"Come out, Luthor! I know you're in there!" the deranged voice called. Another burst of gunfire smashed through the second large-paned windowoff to his leftand shattered it to pieces as well. He grimaced at the panicked screams of the Metropolitan populace, cut off in desperation as the people making the noise muffled themselves or were quieted by others down to soft whimpers. 

"How stupid do you think I am? I'm not coming out there to get shot!" Lex yelled back. "Superman's going to get you any second now." 

The happy laughter he heard in response did not bode well. 

"Superman isn't coming," the voice explained gleefully and slowly as if to a small stupid child. "He's busy! Elsewhere. Though why you think you'd get any help..." the voice trailed off. "Well, I suppose he _is_ that good, but that's why there are people like me, right?" Lex could almost hear the grin. He clenched his jaw and cursed under his breath. 

"And don't think you can just wait on the police, either," the voice continued. "They're already here, but they're just as useless as always. See, I've got a detonator set up on a dead man's switch to a bomb in that diner you're refusing to leave, so they're all going to stay right where they are. ...Oh, and if you don't come out I'll blow it and you'll die." Lex shivered. The bastard had at least twenty people trapped in here, and the only person the psychopath seemed capable of focusing on was him. 

"So either way I die -- doesn't sound like much incentive," Lex called back. Best not to let the asshole think of using them as hostages against his good behavior. He didn't want to assume how far the range might be on the transmitter -- he knew some could stretch for miles. 

"Oh, I don't want to kill you!" the voice laughed. 

"Could have fooled me," Lex muttered. 

"I just want to talk!" 

_What?_

"Come out, and I won't shoot you. I'd rather not kill you actually, unless you give me no choice." And Lex didn't need to see the facial expression attached to that voice to recognize the dark intent for what it was. "Just come out, we'll have a little chat, and then you can go. No harm done." And what was most scary about the last was that it was given in a deadpan voice that seemed eminently reasonable, and sounded... true. 

At least, assuming that one could call innocent bystanders getting caught in a madman's crossfire and more damage to an already-war-torn city recovering from a near-collision with an alien planet 'no harm'. 

Lex waited a few seconds, which started to stretch into a minute. 

He jolted at another burst of gunfire over his head. More screams. 

"God, just go already! At least only you will die!" "Some of us have families!" "Please!" he heard the frightened, hate-filled chorus around him. 

"I say we grab him and toss him out!" said another, and at that Lex had had enough. Ungrateful bastards. He _owned_ this establishment. He owned _half the city_. He'd shelled out millions in city-wide repairs to help fix buildings that weren't even _his_. 

_If I'm going to die, it isn't going to be while cowering in a room with these... sheep,_ he hissed to himself, nearly incoherent with rage. 

Lex stood slowly, levering himself to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. He stared down at the cowering masses and heard one person whisper, "Thank you." 

"Go to hell," he spat back, then turned and stepped through the gaping windowpane and out onto the street to face his assailant. 

He felt a little disoriented as he realized that the mousy-looking and otherwise highly-dismissable scruffy wire-spectacle-wearing man standing in front of him, with the detonator upheld in one hand and the gun pointed at his chest, was the crazy one.

 _Or maybe I am for thinking I wouldn't be shot on sight. ...Though I haven't been. Yet._

"Come closer!" the man yelled. "Can't have a proper conversation having to yell across the street!" When Lex didn't move immediately, he added, raising the gun slightly higher, "Unless you'd really rather that I shoot you in the head." 

Lex moved forward slowly, trying to buy more time. No help was forthcoming, however, and he came to a stop about a yard from the gun-wielding maniac. 

Who then sighed and smiled at him, stepping in closer. It took a bit more effort not to flinch away than Lex would have liked. 

"I really am sorry for all this," the man said, tilting his head about at the scene. "If you'd been easier to find, well..." A shrug. "But I simply didn't have high enough clearance. Otherwise, this could have been over before it had even begun!" He looked Lex over and tsked at Lex's sluggishly bleeding left arm. "Oh dear, and that was the good arm, too," he sighed, before adding brightly with a sunny smile, "But don't worry, you'll be right as rain soon enough!" 

"What do you want?" Lex asked smoothly, hands at his side, radiating calm when all he really felt was cold, hard fury at this rambling madman. 

"Why, to fix you, of course!" 

Lex stared down at his chest and staggered away. That had hurt like hell! "What..." he croaked. 

His eyes widened and he shivered involuntarily as he brought his right hand up far too late. The lunatic hadn't been holding a detonator, it had been some kind of autoinjector that he'd slammed into his chest, right into his heart-- 

"Oh, don't worry Zero," the lunatic whispered confidentially. "You'll be all better soon. It's the same injection I gave Fifteen, after all, and look how well he's doing now! A hero for a villain -- what a wonderful trade, don't you think? You'll actually be able to do some good instead of continuing Luthor's evil!" He grinned maniacally.

"What. Did. You. Inject. Me. With." Lex asked tightly, starting to sweat. 

"Why, Superman's blood, of course," the lab tech said like he was discussing the weather. "Really, Lx0, you should just relax and let go. It'll be much easier on you. You'll heal right up, just perfect. No bad memories inflicted on you from that diseased mind. They'll all just fade away as your body reconfigures itself, wipes itself clean. All better." He didn't even struggle as the police grabbed him by the arms from behind and disarmed him. 

_Well, that was just overkill,_ Lex thought hysterically, wondering yet again exactly what horrors were contained within his memories from before the aborted planetfall. _I don't really remember anything right **now.**_

Then he shuddered a moment and felt... sick. That... wasn't right... He'd read his own medical files, he wasn't supposed to get sick... 

"Are you all right, Mr. Luthor?" one of the arresting policemen asked him, sounding almost concerned. 

Lex looked up at him. "I--" Then he stopped and coughed wetly. At the horrified looks he got, he looked down at the hand he'd used to cover his mouth, saw the fresh blood... 

"That's not-- That's not right. That's not what-- _That's not right!_ " the lunatic started to struggle. "That's not-- That wasn't--! No! That's not supposed to happen!" 

Lex shuddered and curled in on himself as his knees hit the pavement. 

"That wasn't supposed to happen!" 

The faint wail accompanied him down into darkness. 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Lex awoke to beeping. And wires. Lots of wires. 

Damn hospitals. He hated hospitals. Especially when he was in them for procedures. Mainly because that was nearly the only time he was in them. 

No tubes though, this time. Thank god. 

He turned his head and saw a familiar face was blinking down at him. 

"Goddamnit Clark, fuck off and leave me alone," he snarled. Clark just blinked at him, which made him that much angrier. "Where the hell were you earlier anyway?" Lex accused. "And what the hell are you _wearing?_ " he ended with no small amount of horror as he got a good look at the... whatever the hell that was... as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Clark had always been gone on red and blue, but, good lord--! 

"I guess that answers that question," another voice drawled out grimly. Lex swiveled his head and saw Oliver at the foot of his hospital bed, dressed in his damn Green Arrow costume. Along with a few other notable faces, none of which looked happy. 

"Why the hell is half the League in my hospital room?" Lex hissed at Clark. _And why are they not trying to kill me?_ Clark just sighed. 

"Because the whole League wouldn't fit?" a sunny voice quipped by the door. Clark glanced over and frowned. 

"Conner, you really shouldn't be here--" Clark started. 

"Yeah, well, Tess is down the hall anyway, so..." The young teen shrugged. There was something... off... about the young man. Lex's eyes narrowed. 

"Figured I might as well either say 'hi, welcome to the family of freaks' or... uh... hi?" he ended awkwardly. "So, uh, evil incarnate, huh?" he said casually-nervous, sliding his hands into his pockets, and Lex knew that gesture. 

Lex shoved his arms straight down and sat bolt upright. "Why the hell do you look like me?!?" he demanded of the youth. 

"Uh, clone?" he said, pointing to himself. "Well, mutant now, anyway." He glanced over to Clark, looking confused and a little worried. "So, does that mean he remembers or not?" 

Lex sucked in a breath to tell the clone off, then clenched his teeth and hissed out that same breath slowly as he blinked and realized that... that he did remember. Everything. Which he hadn't before. 

Then the earlier statement about Tess being on the same floor finished processing. His head swiveled to the side before he checked the motion -- being completely useless as she wasn't in the same room and he couldn't see through walls -- and he made a lunge out of bed. Clark simply grabbed him midway and slammed him back into the pillows. 

"Damn you, let go!" Lex yelled, squirming and lashing out. "Tess is--!" on the same floor, and the morgue was not on this floor, it was in the basement. Which meant--

And then Lex remembered what Lutessa had done to him and he snarled and fought like a wildcat against Clark to get free.

"That bitch! That bitch! I'm going to---! Damn you, LET ME GO!!" Lex screamed at Clark. Clark just grimaced and held on, while the clone backed away looking a little... scared? That hardly concerned him at the moment, as he struggled futilely against Clark's strength, grabbing and pulling at his arms. 

Then he realized that Clark was not keeping him as well-restrained as he should have been able to -- human-strength at best -- and glanced down. Saw the slightly-bulging veins that shouldn't be reacting that way, because where was the meteor rock? -- he hadn't had any on him.

Then Lex realized that the reaction got worse when he moved his hands closer to Clark's arms and he froze. His eyes went wide.

No, he hadn't any _on_ him.

"Lex?" came the pained question. 

_"What the hell did you do...?"_ Lex asked tightly, his voice shaking, barely above a whisper. 

"It was killing you." 

"Superman's blood." 

"My blood." 

"Clark!" Oliver hissed. The others started forward. 

"Get out," Clark said, turning to them. 

"You just--! You can't just--" Bart stammered in disbelief.

"We have to decide what to do with him," Dinah added, and it was clear from her tone what she thought should be done. 

_" **GET OUT!!!** "_ Clark bellowed at the lot of them. 

Lex closed his eyes while the not-so-merry-anymore band of saboteurs left in a hurry. The door slammed shut, the room empty save for him and Clark. 

"Your blood," he repeated weakly. Not The Blur, but The Superman? A Nietzschean ideal spun on its head until it vomited primary colors? 

Then all of his newer memories, post-Tess' memory-goop attack, finished slotted into place with an internal 'click' that he nearly _felt_ , and Lex's head swam for a moment as his mental image of Superman-from-a-distance suddenly overlapped with Clark-close-up... and The Reporter, and The Blur, and the Red And Blue Blur, and Kal-El, and The Kyrptonian Menace, and Numan, and plain old Clark Kent... 

...as if seeing Clark in primary colors and a cape wouldn't be a dead giveaway to anyone who'd seen the Superman photos, distant as they were.

Not when the 'anyone' in question didn't have some form of brain damage, chemically-induced or otherwise, at least.

"My blood," Clark confirmed again, quietly. 

Lex slowly looked up at Clark-nee-Superman, the gaudily-clad nightmare. "What--" he croaked. 

"It was my blood, and it was killing you. You..." Clark swallowed. "Your immune system was fighting it and destroying anything that was being healed by it. Which was a lot." He grimaced. "Enough Kryptonite -- meteor rock -- will disintegrate it, but it isn't a good idea to inject the raw stuff, everybody knows that." He paused, looking grim. "So we injected you with the maximum safe dosage of Kryptonite serum that you'd been using on people in Level 3-- well, Level 33.1, now." 

Lex stared. Then he hissed, "You _idiot!_ " Clark winced, and stated to open his mouth. Lex cut him off, squirming away and trying to hit him in the chest, which just got his arms grabbed again. _"Do you have any idea what you've done?!"_ Lex screamed at him. 

"Saved your life," Clark stated firmly, evenly. 

Lex's eyes rolled upwards and he fought the urge to strangle the boy-man, as well as the rising panic. "That serum _boosts powers_ in--" Lex had to stop and breath a few times, he was shaking so hard. _"Do you have any idea what you've done to me!?!"_ he shrieked. 

Clark looked uncertain, at the start of worry. "We only gave you one dose. The effects only last for a week or two at the most, it'll wear off..." Then he frowned and regathered himself, accused, "It's just-- Your immune system could use the boost anyway--"

"It's not my immune system that's--" Lex shook his head and tried to refocus, because he realized that he was sweating now and feeling a cold chill starting at his fingertips, and that was _not_ a good sign. He spoke as calmly as he could, given the circumstances."You need to call Belle Reeve. You need to talk to Doctor Caselli, get him to give you restraints. Powered restraints. A full set -- _Don't argue with me!_ " he hissed up at Clark, who blanched as Lex's grip tightened and he shook the meteor-rock-weakened Kryptonian once, hard, for good measure. "You get them, you come straight back... here..." Lex started feeling dizzy. "You--" His eyes defocused. "Nngn."

He slumped against Clark, and everything started to bleed colors and sounds into each other. 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

When next he came back to awareness, he had the solid feel of singleton bracelet restraints at his wrists and each of his ankles, and he felt the weight of the matching neck collar at his throat when he breathed in. That was no small relief. He wasn't tied down though, which was an even greater relief. Dr. Albright was staring down at him, as was Dr. Caselli. His family doctor and the Belle Reeve doctor with the most experience with meteor freak cases were both looming over him looking exhausted? That didn't bode well. And a third female doctor of asian descent, who he didn't recognize that was sitting in one of the chairs and flipping through a magazine, hadn't even bothered to stand. 

He was in the same hospital room, at least. He thought. It looked the same...

He turned his head and glanced between Caselli and the unknown quantity. 

"Dr. Christina Lamell. She was the doctor who handled Conner's recovery. She has experience with the effects of a certain blood sample on clone physiology." 

"That madman in the street... said something about a Zero -- an Lx0, and a Fifteen..." 

"Lx15, yes," Dr. Lamell responded, not bothering to glance up. "The project was Lx15, then Alexander, and now Conner." 

The boy from before. The clone. 

"And you are Lx0," she ended. 

_"I am not a clone,"_ he gritted out. 

"Of course not, but you do have bits of you that are... or were," Dr. Albright said smoothly. 

"That lab tech was an idiot, his mind poisoned by Miss Mercer," Dr. Caselli added. "You were Patient Zero, the originating source, not some--" he waved it off. 

Lex's head whipped around and he struggled to get himself upright. "What the _hell_ are you two talking about?" 

Lex's mind skipped ahead, lightning fast, trying to make sense of what he already knew. Someone had been cloning bits of him, for him? Possibly fifteen of them, or more, from the sound of the numbering scheme? And why was at least one full and obviously off-spec copy of him out and about, walking and talking and calling itself 'Conner'? And if parts of him had been cloned from his own DNA...? --Why had they cloned him instead of simply growing new skin? Hadn't surface-level frostbite been the majority of the worst damage? Why hadn't they simply done normal transplants? 

They exchanged glances. "You were badly injured in the Arctic..." Dr. Caselli started. 

"Yes, I know; I was there," Lex drawled out hoarsely. His fingers itched for a gun, because maybe a threat of eminent death would speed things along a bit. If he was lucky.

Dr. Lamell was somewhat amused, and... somewhat not. Lex didn't bother sparing her a glance, too busy glaring at his other two primary targets. 

"Your body could not recover on its own--" 

"You know, this may be a somewhat _daring_ thought, but let's just try this out, just this once, as something new," Lex snarled out derisively. "Why don't you tell me something I _don't_ know?" 

"Your immune system is so aggressive that it fights off normal, healthy donor organs as if they are invasive foreign matter," Dr. Albright said. 

"And this _surprises_ \--?" Lex stopped as the ramifications of that hit. "No, wait, that can't be right." 

"That is what--" Lex held up a hand and Albright stopped talking. He took a moment to try and trace his response, lined everything up, then began again. ticking points off. 

"I used to have asthma. The meteor shower mutated me. I don't have asthma anymore, because my mutation gives me an improved immune system." 

"No..." Dr. Albright started slowly, glancing at Dr. Caselli. "It gives you a _heightened_ immune system, from what Dr. Vaughn has determined." 

Lex frowned. How many of his people were in on this? "Dr. Vaughn is here?" 

"She's been compiling your bloodwork. It's been keeping her very busy. She was able to comprehend and understand your responses to the poison you had been exposed to, and has been very helpful in determining your course of treatment." She pinched her nose lightly before continuing. "Asthma is generally an overreaction by a person's immune system to environmental factors, yes, but your immune system didn't normalize -- in layman's terms, it just got better and more efficient at isolating and removing what it was attacking, and making it easier for the rest of your system to recover from the damage." 

"But I've taken blood tranfusions before without difficulty," Lex put forth.

"Apparently the foreign blood cells from the transfusions survived only for a short time before being consumed. However, they were able to operate long enough before being attacked and destroyed that your body was able to quickly replace them with its own cells, using the raw material derived from them to manufacture the necesssary native cells in your bone marrow."

"...Thus I'm not able to take transplants, as most organ cells are far slower to reproduce than to break down, so you had to clone parts of me to replace what was too damaged to heal on it own--" Lex intuited. 

"Parts!?" Dr. Lamell nearly spat out. 

Lex glanced between them all. "What aren't you telling me?" he demanded dangerously. "For that matter, why is a _full_ imperfect clone of me wandering around unsupervised--" with _Clark_ of all people looking out for it, as if he cared? And what did it have to do with Mercer? 

"I wasn't a part of that project!" Dr. Caselli exclaimed, putting his hands up. "I had no knowledge--!" 

"Shut up," Dr. Albright barked out. He jumped and his mouth snapped shut. "No one cares about the culpability, or lack thereof. Mr. Luthor," she said reasonably, turning to face him, "you have to understand that most of the scientists working on the project died in the attack on the facility. Those that did survive are in Ms. Mercer's pocket and are not a reliable source of information," she added, glancing at Dr. Lamell. 

Lex got the hint, but at this point he didn't really care. "Just spit it out." 

"You were cloning whole versions of yourself, downloading all your memories into them, and murdering them for their organs and limbs. And you programmed them to love you for it. Don't try to deny it," Dr. Lamell explained in the self-righteous staccato of the morally-superior, dropping the magazine on the side table and crossing her arms, with a sneer of revulsion. 

Lex looked at her, mouth agape. Then he looked to Dr. Albright, and realized that it wasn't a lie. 

"You. Did. _WHAT?!?!_ " Lex shrieked.

Dr. Lamell shrank back in confusion. Caselli winced and glanced at the door with longing.

Dr. Albright looked completely calm, composed, and perfectly unruffled. 

"I performed your surgeries myself, but I did not know where the organs came from, only that they would not be rejected. Not until much later after the fact," she said smoothly. 

Lex squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth together until he literally heard them grinding against each other in his own ears. He held onto his temper with both hands and feet, as he reminded himself that Albright had been Lionel's doctor first, and that that meant that she probably wouldn't have blinked an eye even if she _had_ known or, say, that the 'spare parts' -- that hadn't really been spare, now, had they? -- had been coming from orphans from a third world country, instead. And, being the sort of person she was, she had completely missed the entire point -- the thrice-damned memory download. 

"Goddamnit, how many times do I have to tell you people that clones are not the originals!" Lex growled, rubbing his temples as he tried to forestall an eminent raging headache. "The physical neural pathways are different, at a minimum, and the genetics aren't the same if you're forcing the aging process with meteor rock. Am I the only one of you lot who actually _understood_ what I was learning for my bioengineering degree?" He shook his head. "And they decided, what, that a Lex Luthor that they could grow and program themselves would be saner and easier to control? More _reasonable?_ Maybe give them a little better _funding?_ " His voice cracked and he laughed darkly as the three doctors tried to hide their squirming discomfort. Clearly, that had struck a little too close to home.

And of course, that didn't even begin to touch upon the problem of having multiple cloned 'him's running around with his full knowledge set and no oversight! From start to finish, Lex had only ever had one clone come out even somewhat a success. The rest had been just as sociopathic as the first cloned Emily Dinsmore, and he'd learned the horrible truth after Grant Gabriel's autopsy. From the protein markers and the state of the DNA strands, it was undeniably evident that even Gabriel's body would have started to fall into the disrepair of runaway aging soon enough; autopsy of his brain also showed that the brain chemistry marking descent into psychosis had already begun, even if it had not fully developed before the kill order. He'd stopped the cloning projects and destroyed the results for a reason -- it had been a dead end and no good would come from having disposable 'people' on tap. That was too much power at playing God, even for him, possible questionable definitions of humanity and moral consequences aside; Lord knew what Lionel would have done with it when he'd gotten his hands on it, after learning of Gabriel's existence and knowing it was possible -- Lionel had used people and tossed them aside like they were nothing, and he had associated with people like Edge who didn't think twice about using normal humans as cannon fodder, for gods sake! 

And here he was, being told that his people had opened up that Pandora's box yet again, and unleashed psychotic, sociopathic, _damaged_ badly-made clones of himself upon the world. Lex barely held it together as it was, and sometimes had to doubt his own sanity given the lengths to which he had to go and the depths he had to sink to in his bid to keep the world save from alien menaces and metahumans alike; he shuddered to think what those clones might have done while he had been incapacitated. Too bad that he was probably going to have to find out the hard way and take the blame as the responsible party, but when was life ever fair? 

"Well, I suppose I should be grateful that you're a completely amoral bitch, then," Lex finally continued, spearing Albright in his sharp gaze. "I'd be dead if it wasn't for you and your lot of 'Doctor' Frankensteins harvesting the failed copies in case the original might be salvageable after all, yes?" He smirked, though it was hardly more than a curled lip displaying teeth. 

The good doctor had the brains to remain silent. Lex jerked his head at the closed door and she got the hell out. Lamell went with her, so she couldn't be all that stupid, despite her loose tongue. Lex made a mental note to usurp all her files on the Conner-clone the first moment he was able. 

"And why are you here?" he demanded of Dr. Caselli, turning on him when he didn't leave. 

"I'm making a diagnosis on the mental health and threat level of a meteor freak," he replied, all professional again, but with a gleam in his eye that Lex did not like at all.

"I didn't call for you, get out." 

"Oh, but you called for my expertise," Caselli continued. "You know the procedures." 

Yes, yes he did. He'd written them, after all. Any request for meteor-suppression tech outside normal channels sent up red flags and a high-level representative who could make an evaluation went with the delivery. He was probably lucky that there weren't security guards posted outside the door. Or in the room with them, waiting for an outburst. 

Which he'd done now. Repeatedly. 

"I'm fine." No response. "I'll recover. Undoubtedly the majority of the serum burned out combating the foreign blood introduced to my system." Still no response. "I'm not psychotic!" he gritted out. 

"I think you could benefit from further observation," Caselli said with a sympathetic smile that had no softening impact on the greed shining in his eyes. "After all, we never did finish your response set under the test conditions before..." he trailed off. 

Oh yes. _Those_ tests. The original ones which he'd had every willing and relatively stable meteor freak subject themselves to, before the tests started to get out of hand. The ones using the boosting serum, before they'd developed the power-restraints to control the subjects properly, or been able to extrapolate the full range and scope of mutation effects from far less dangerous and invasive procedures that did not require power-amplification and trial-and-error. The ones Lex had bowed out of because they'd started to have a discernible negative mental effect on him, and he couldn't afford to go insane, even temporarily, when he was the one overseeing the entire damn process and apparently the only one keeping people in check and curtailing abuses to any degree. 

Like hell was he going to let Caselli take him back to Belle Reeve in chains. Like hell was he ever letting _anyone_ have that kind of control over him again. 

"Try it and I'll tear out your spleen with my teeth and make you eat it," Lex shot back coldly. He was not in the mood for this. 

"Not with those restraints on," Caselli said a little too smugly. 

Lex saw red. 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Lex awoke staring at the ceiling, feeling like he'd misplaced time somehow. Or perhaps time had misplaced him. 

He felt an odd out-of-place weight on his right arm, and turned his head slightly. 

The clone -- no, Conner -- was asleep next to him, almost wrapped around his right arm. His hair was a mess and he was drooling a little onto his sleeve.

Still in the hospital bed, in the hospital room. 

He vaguely remembered launching himself at Caselli, grabbing him by the shirt, and punching him in the face. 

Things had gotten more confused after Lex had slammed Caselli into the floor, pushing down hard with his full weight, incoherent with rage. He'd gotten one hand in a good grip on the bastard's head and Caselli had... started screaming. 

And then it had felt as though something had clamped down on his own skull and squeezed, and he'd locked up, frozen in a rictus of pain. 

There had been shouts, some yelling or another, and in the confusion the clone had been there, suddenly, pulling him up and away and back onto the bed, where he'd promptly collapsed.

Lex glanced up at perceived motion as Clark silently walked in and closed the door behind him quietly. He'd gotten better at stealth at some point. Lex looked him over as he came closer. So, it was The Reporter this time. The ruffled three-piece suit and tie, ugly-as-hell glasses, slicked-back hair all offended Lex's sight, but it was still better than the clown suit. Barely. 

Maybe he should just be grateful that Clark wasn't affecting the Mild-Mannered Idiot personality that usually went with it. 

Lex started without preamble. 

"So, he's here to bodyguard me?" nodding down at the peacefully slumbering form. 

"Who said he's here to keep _you_ safe?" Clark replied. 

That hurt. A little bit.

Lex changed the subject, looking over the clone. "He's awfully... snuggly. For a me." Clark gave him a quirky smile, and Lex played with his clone's hair a bit. It was odd, a little silky, reminded him of-- 

"He's not you. Not anymore," Clark said, pulling a chair over. 

Lex raised an eyebrow or two. "Something about losing my memories because of your blood?" he ventured, remembering the incoherent rant of the madman that was now a little less incoherent from new knowledge gained.

"Actually, he lost every memory he had had up until the point when he stabilized. With half your DNA, and half mine." 

Lex blinked at him, frowning. Then that sentence actually made it through his brain. 

"...I'm a dad?" Lex said, sounding strangled even to himself. 

Clark shrugged. 

"Oh, hell no! You do not shrug at me over _this!_ \--Him! _Whatever_ he is! You do _not_ \--" Lex hissed quietly, then at Clark's small smile, he spat out, "What??" 

Then he followed Clark's gaze to where he had unconsciously cupped a hand over Conner's ear to cover it from the noise. 

His heart sank a little. 

"Damnit, Clark," he nearly whined, feeling so, so tired. "I can't keep him. _You_ can't keep him." Too many questions in Clark's case; they were too close to the same age. Too many ways he'd end up screwed up, in Lex's. Lex didn't want to drag anyone else down his dark path, let alone expose an impressionable youth to the sorts of dark dealings and dirty decisions that he had to make every day.

It was bad enough that Lex himself had to walk it, that necessary route, pain and suffering accompanying each and every step. Someone had to do it, and Lex was already damned; so why not him? If he didn't do it... then _maybe_ he could have Conner -- for a short while -- until he learned of all the unforgivable things Lex had already done... and continued to do, and would not stop doing becase they needed to be done.  And then Lex would have lost him forever, anyway, in an even worse and more pain-filled way. Not that Lex _could_ just stop. Because if Lex didn't do what was necessary, then who would? It needed to be done, and if it wasn't Lex doing it then...

And damn if he wasn't going to be a better father than Lionel, even if that meant giving up his own flesh-and-blood, as screwed up and accidentally-on-purpose as his son's conception must have been. Maybe Martha...? Conner was half Clark's son, after all, wasn't he? Lex glanced back up at Clark. 

Clark just looked at him sadly. 

"Could Martha...?" he asked hopefully.

"She already has been," Clark sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle it or wake Conner in so doing.

"...But?" Lex said quietly, sensing a problem.

"He's your son," Clark said, looking away.

"She couldn't possibly object because of that!" Lex protested quietly, scoffing. At Clark's lack of response, he began to feel a growing horror. "...She couldn't possibly object because of that--?!" His eyes grew wide. "--Clark!?"

"It's not that, Lex," Clark said, turning back to him, patting his leg soothingly, and looking horribly tired. "It's just..."

"What?"

"He's your son."

"...I don't understand."

"Don't you want him?"

It felt like Clark had thrust a knife in his heart and twisted. "Of course I do," Lex said painfully, clamping down on tears. "But I... can't..."

"Why not?"

"I just... I can't!" Lex said desperately. He couldn't explain this, and Clark wouldn't understand it anyway, it... damn it, he knew he wasn't thinking rationally, he felt his emotions threatening to swamp him, but he _knew_ in his blood and bone that he couldn't keep Conner. He just couldn't.

"Why, Lex?"

"Because I'll ruin him!" Lex blurted out, and then hated himself for doing so. He felt Conner shift at his side and startled, afraid that the boy -- his son -- had been listening in, until he realized that his deep breathing and restless movement were wholly consistent with sleep, and not a feigned sleep.

When he looked back up at Clark, he wanted to simply die of shame from the look the Kryptonian was giving him, now.

"He's your son, too," Lex whispered. It wasn't fair. It couldn't work.

"I know. We'll make it work, somehow," Clark said, glancing away and staring off into the distance, out the window-in-sunset.

 _...We?_ Lex grimaced, but he was too emotionally worn out to protest just then. He stroked Conner's hair again, running his fingers through the strands and couldn't help but marvel at this miracle of science and low-probability madness. Conner had sort of a cool static-y warmth to him, like a winding snake that should by rights be slimy from the look of him, but instead was surprisingly smooth and supple and just a little bit... odd. In a good way.

Connor didn't feel poisonous, though. That was good. ...Maybe more like the type that was perfectly content to lay out on a sunny rock and happily soak in the warmth, basking in the sunlight streaming down in waves from the heavens.

His fingers felt frission-y as they lightly traced lines over Conner's scalp, like they wanted to twitch and twitch and twitch, even though they didn't really have to.

Lex continued to stroke his fingers through Conner's hair. He had a bad feeling that this sort of thing was going to become very addictive very quickly. Lying here in bed like this, stroking his son's hair, was really very restive. Too peaceful. He was really having trouble conceiving of doing anything else. Ever. And didn't want to.

Fuck, damn, and shit. ...Who the hell could he possibly find to do what he had been doing, who wouldn't burn the planet down doing it? And how deeply could he bury what he'd already done? Would plausible deniability be enough, or would he have to make plans to try and mindwipe or otherwise brainwash the League, among other notables with long-term memories currently intact?

"Lex..."

Fuck, did Kent have psychic powers now? That would prove rather difficult to get around. Would it be easier to remove whatever psychic abilities might exist in them from the lot of them, or to remove the worst of the damning memories from his own self again?

"Lex, stop thinking so much, ok? Just... rest and try and get better first. We'll figure it all out later, ok?"

"Ok, Clark," Lex said tiredly, leaning back and giving up, for maybe the first time in his life. "Ok."

Clark gave him an unreadable, small smile, leaned forward and gave Lex a slow, soft kiss on the forehead. Lex felt eddies of warmth spread through him from the contact. He closed his eyes and relaxed back into the pillows, wishing that Clark would follow the motion and...

...Clark slid up onto the other side of the bed and curled up around Lex, ever-so-slightly.

_Oh._

Full-body contact along his left side, and Lex felt that warmth just flow straight into him. His eyes fluttered lower, and he couldn't help but relax; there was no way to fight this.

Not when he was like this.

The feeling filled him up and over. It felt like he was overflowing with it, but in a good way, almost. It didn't hurt at all. Quite the opposite -- it was soothing as hell.

Lex drifted in slow, warm, happy thoughts, and he let go and let himself enjoy it, for however long it would last -- he didn't know. And he wasn't sure he cared.

He might have to sneak another dose or two of the serum at some point. It was that addictive.

Eyes closed, he felt Conner at his right hand, and Clark at his side, and it was good. So good.

Conner was supposed to be his good right hand and his heart, and maybe he still could be, in a way.

He and Clark had never really gotten along, blood-fighting-blood, and maybe alone they would have destroyed each other, without and within, in a fight to the death, just as Clark's own blood was doing exactly that to Lex, right then. But with Conner, blood-of-his-blood, and yet also of Clark's alien heritage as well, maybe all things were possible. After all, if a harmonious mix were possible within Conner himself, what did that say for the two of them? Perhaps, through Conner... perhaps...

But Lex was too tired to think on such weighty philosophical matters further, and he finally drifted off in a quiet and much-needed slumber.

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Lex was feeling rather well off when he next woke. Conner was still drooling nearby, at his side, curled around his right arm, but Clark was gone.

It was well into eveningtime, though, so perhaps he was taking dinner, or otherwise busy doing his rounds of the city and fulfilling his heroic duties for the day. Night. Whichever.

No longer feeling as though he'd been run over by a truck, Lex slowly, luxuriously stretched in place without jostling the head and arms entwined about his upper right limb, then began the careful, lengthy process of extricating his arm from a half-alien's rather forceful grip, without waking said hybrid-son of his.

Silently removing himself from the bed and room turned out to be nearly as difficult, but he managed that, too.

Eventually, he made his way not only into the hallway, but to Tess' hospital room itself.

It turned out not to be nearly so hard a feat as he'd imagined it would be, as Tess had claimed her Luthor heritage at some point, and, as her half-brother, it seemed he had by default full family visitation rights as well as a right to know her location.

She should have known better than to leave something like that in place. The fool.

And so Lex found himself clenching the metal bar at the side of her hospital bed, looming over her. The solid, cool feel of the stainless steel under his fingers sent light shivers up his arms. It felt a little like death, but considering how many people had probably died in this bed, that wasn't really a surprise.

Under his dark gaze, Tess blinked open her eyes.

"Hello, Tess, o' hate-full half-sister mine," Lex said simply, letting her know that yes, he knew -- remembered -- exactly who and what she was.

Then those eyes went horribly wide, so wide that Lex could see the whites of her eyes all around the edges, and her mouth opened as she took in a breath for what would no doubt be a silence-shattering near-deafening shriek--

\--but Lex lay one finger across her lips, and all she was able to manage past that was a soft almost inaudible squeak.

"Shh," he said, and even that small sound quieted under his light touch.

Lex felt a prickling of nearly-tangible lies and deceit start to trickle from that one finger up his arm, and he slowly removed it, pulling back, out of her reach. Once that intimate contact was broken, he felt an immeasureable relief that he did not, _dared_ not let himself show. He did not sway, he did not blink. He was stone. Unfeeling, smooth stone with a flat, unreadable expression.

He brought his hand back to the cool metal bar, and gripped death tightly, as it was preferable to lies.

"I wouldn't, were I you," Lex cautioned as her terrified gaze flicked to the call button at her side and back again.

"I'm not you!" she objected shakily, quietly. "I'll never be like you!"

"Of that I am most certain," Lex replied quietly. _And you probably don't even recognize that for the insult that it is,_ he thought as he looked down upon her.

"You can't 'save' me," she stated, more certain of herself as she began to find some sort of mental equilibrium.

Lex paused. _Ah. So we're resuming out cut-short conversation, then...?_ "'Save' you," Lex repeated, with the slightest of smirks. "And you think Clark can?" Lex barely suppressed a laugh at the thought.

"Yes! He already has!" she said, shivering excitedly in her misguided feeling of triumph.

Lex's felt his face freeze.

...And it stopped being funny. He had hoped that she hadn't meant it before, delirious with pain and meaning to strike back in whatever small, mean ways she could, but clearly that had not been the case. He saw now that she believed it wholly, and it send a trickle of ill feeling down his spine to pool in his gut and eat a black hole out of the bottom of his stomach.

"The only person who can save you is yourself, Tess," Lex said slowly. "And you simply are not capable of that."

"...What?" Tess said, the smile slowly slipping off of her face.

"Am I not being clear?" Lex said mildly. He leaned over the bed, over her, and hissed out quietly, " _You're screwed._ "

He watched Tess jerk back into the pillows, wide-eyed, frantic all over again.

Lex pulled back and suppressed a sneer. He could practically smell the fear and loathing saturating the bedclothes. The terror and dread and rank superiority -- misguided, a self-sold lie at best -- was all but billowing out of her pores in noxious clouds.

It made him sick to his stomach.

He kept his reaction well off of his face.

"You-- you can't do anything to me," she said belligerently, her tone, her voice belieing the words coming out of her mouth. "Superman--"

"--can do _nothing,_ " Lex said, letting a smirk grace his face. Letting the slightly-mad clear-but-righteous gleam in his eyes surface. He raised a hand slowly, tilting his wrist, and let the sight of the power-suppressing bracelet catch her gaze. He let his smile widen as she recognized it, and her gaze moved back to his.

" _ **Freak!**_ " she hissed, as though she knew the meaning of the word. As if that made her better than him somehow. Lex's eyes narrowed.

"True enough," he said mildly, taking a breath and mentally steeling himself. And then he brought two fingers -- pointer and middle -- down to touch the center of her forehead, just barely grazing the surface of her skin... and _pushed_.

Tess' spine arched at a horrible angle, her eyes rolling back in her head as her face grew rigid in a ricktus of pain and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

Lex's eyes narrowed further as he concentrated sheer anger, rage, and pure, unadulterated _hatred_ from his core, down his arm, and out his fingers into her skull. He shoved it hard into her mind, and thoroughly ignored the black spots he was getting across his vision from the feedback he was receiving from her.

She couldn't handle her own pain and hate, let alone his.

The reverse, however...

After an eternity or two, Lex lifted his fingers off her head, removing his oh-so-gentle physical touch, and breaking the rather different mental one.

Tess was reduced to a whimpering mess on the bed.

He'd hardly been trying.

It didn't take him long to suppress his own shivers. Her pain was _nothing_ compared to his. He'd kept it close, lived with it daily, hourly, minute-by-minute, learned to stop counting the seconds. He'd _owned_ it, for _years_. It was incomparable. Hers had felt so small it had been laughable next to his.

The only _real_ problem he'd had was dealing with the distorted echo of his own emotions, coming right back up the link. It had been dissimilar enough once she had gotten through with feeling what he'd forced her to feel that it had given him real issue.

No matter. He could still handle it. An echo was merely an echo, after all.

He waited for her to regain some semblance of control, for her to finish blinking the unbidden tears out of her eyes and manage to hold down the worst of the shaking, quailing, tremors through her frame.

And then he slowly smiled.

"Just imagine, Tess, what I could do to you without the restraints. Why," he leaned down in front of her, staring her in the eyes, clutching at the metal rail of a hospital bed that had held so many of the dead and dying before her, letting the safe clear-cut feeling of cold, comforting death washing over him, into him, soothing like a balm, "Tess, my dear sister, just _imagine_. Would I even need to _touch_ " -- he brought his hand forward, the same right hand as before, and she flinched away, hard; he brought it back to the rail quite quickly -- "you to make my displeasure known?"

"I-- I--" she stammered.

"You are going to stay out of my business from now on, Tess," he said in a bland, reasonable tone. "You are going to leave LuthorCorp, and crawl back below the rock I found you hiding under before my misguided attempt to raise you up into the light." He leaned forward again. "You will stay out of _all_ my professional, personal, and private affairs, alike. Do you understand?" he whispered to her.

Because if he was going to have any chance with Conner at all, he was going to need her so scared, so busy running from her own shadow, that she wouldn't have the time or the ability to fuck him over by dripping poison into the ears of his only son. He couldn't stand the thought of Tess turning Conner against him.

He needed her scared. He needed her terrified. Cowed. Broken. Running. Gone.

This would be a good first start. Because it was necessary to have started immediately. Now. Before she had time to marshall any resources, any defenses at all.

Never underestimate a Luthor, son.

He could almost hear, smell, **feel** Tess' heart thrumming away rabbit-fast in her chest. She shot a hand out to the side for the call button and Lex slapped it away with a wide sweep of his arm. The switch fell off onto the floor and hit with a rattle, the cord swinging off to the side, too far away for her to grab and retrieve from the bed.

Tess cringed back and whimpered just before she aggressively swung at Lex wildly, counter to all physical indications otherwise, _the lying sociopath_. But he knew her well and was well-ready for it -- so, rather than being caught off-guard, he grabbed her by the wrists and forced both her arms down onto the bed at her sides. Fear/panic/loathing/hate slammed into him, and in return he shoved black oozing disgust and volcano-hot fury down his arms and up hers, swamping her with it. He was drowning her as quickly as he could in it, but still far too slowly for his liking.

He couldn't stop the painful, dreaded feedback he was receiving from her, but he could overwhelm her enough that she couldn't maintain awareness long enough to notice what this -- _she_ \-- was doing to him in turn.

"What are you doing?" he heard from behind him through the surrounding grey fog of Tess' _dread-fear-horror_ shot through with pulsing-red-lightning of _pain-pain-PAIN!_ It barely registered above the dim tactile sensation he was getting of the subdued shaking of Tess' physical body. Male voice. Couldn't quite make out the tone, but it didn't sound like Clark. So it must be...

"Having... a... discussion-with... your... half.an.aunt. Go. Away." Lex gritted it out slowly, unable to look away from Tess. Not that he could truly see her through the fog anymore. Or the room.

And then Lex's back arched and he felt like he was caught like a sparking short-circuit in an electrical system as livewire-lightning shot through and around his chest, arced up over his head --and slammed down through his crown, traveled down his spine, and out his back and jesus-christ-it-hurt- _hecouldn't **think**_

Lex was left panting, and slowly awareness of the physical world came back. He was shaking. He had let go of Tess. He was bent over a little, half-collapsed. Someone -- Conner -- had an arm wrapped around him, chest-level, the other hand at his head. A palm across his forehead.

He could still feel the lightning. It hurt worse than he could have imagined. He couldn't stop shaking. He was barely holding himself together.

Small wonder he'd spasmodically let go of Tess. He couldn't handle both at once. Could barely -- _was_ barely surviving this. Fucking _hurt_ , like knives tearing out his insides.

"Let... go..." Lex tried, then gritted his teeth and spasmed again as the wave shot up in intensity, then dropped off again, but not any lower than before. Not that he could tell.

He struggled weakly against Conner, then against himself. Then he realized with a dawning horror that from working on Tess he'd somehow cracked something open in his head -- or his heart, the way both were aching -- that he couldn't close -- not on his own -- and the bracelets weren't enough anymore...

"Don't let go, Conner," he heard, and with an effort he raised his head slightly and made out laughing eyes sunken in a twisted, skin-deep-lovely visiage. Tess slowly sat up from the bed, leaning heavily on her arms to keep upright, looking amused.

"Those bracelets aren't to keep you in, are they," she said slowly, thickly, like she had to try out words before getting them out. "They're to keep everyone else _out_." He heard a slight mad giggle, and something inside him squirmed and twisted at the sound, wanting out. Wanting to flee.

"Huh?" he felt, more than heard, from Conner. A quick exhalation outward, as Lex was held back, pressed against his chest. _God, Conner, fucking let go, let go of me, please god..._ He couldn't feel his mouth to work to get the words out anymore, he couldn't think properly through the mess, and he couldn't **push** the way he had with Tess to make him let go, couldn't hurt _him_. Not him. _Please, not him._

Lex was having trouble breathing. He could see, barely, but the shakes were getting worse. His vision narrowed, and he wasn't sure he could get out another word.

"It's really simple, so unbelievably simple," she breathed out, and it felt foul, so foul. Lex tried to twist farther away from the rolling cloud of it in front of him, creeping towards him, but he was held so tightly... "He needs you, Conner. He can feel things, and share them, but he's been keeping things out for so long... all the good things, the best things that could help him... you can help him." Fucking deception slicking off her in oily sheets, he could taste it in the back of his mouth from across the room and it made him shudder. "Just let him feel how much you care about him, Conner. You can help him, like no-one else can, or ever could. Let him feel love," he heard her say smoothly, convincingly.

_...Love?_

And then the lightning tripled in intensity, and Lex's head jerked back and his vision blacked out. All he could do now was feel that-- that-- _sizzling shock of pure electric white-hot **crackling** love-devotion-obsession_ \-- he hadn't _recognized_ it before, why had he not...? -- compressed into pure _need_ , pure _want_ , surrounded and encapsulated within a sheathe of fear and little jolting spikes of pain. It slid through his insides like jagged shards of obsidian-glass, slicing through everything. And it was a shock, every time. Paniful, coursing shock after shock after shock. Because, love? How? Love? Why? Love? For him?

_Love...?_

He was coming apart at the seams.

He felt things breaking inside. Couldn't manage enough presence of mind to care.

It hurt like hell, and something... gave in and he... almost welcomed it.

Wasn't sure he wanted it to stop.

And then he was grabbed-tossed- _thrown_ into a sea of warmth and the lightning was gone, dissipated into the water. He fell upon a solid beach gasping and jerking like a fish. On the wrong side of the beach. Flailed, and fell further. Underwater, under the waves, where he could breath again, his fishy little thoughts.

He moaned softly and curled into the warmth, slid back with the inevitable, indomitable tug of the tide and submerged deep, deep, deep. Closed his eyes and let it all go. Drain right out.

There went the pain, spiraling down into darker depths. Perfectly welcome down there.

Lex would stay right here, though, where it was a bit warmer. He liked it here. Floating in the deep blue, under and away from more blistering heat.

He felt more than heard the rolling clouds of anger, and some small and distant rains of confusion on the horizon, and other things, all overhead, but they were all far up above. He was down in the deep, the warm deep, and it didn't matter. None of it.

He curled his fingers into Clark's shirt, sighed into Clark's strong, solid chest. Smelled starch and sunshine and good, clean soap on the inbreath. Didn't even bother to open his eyes.

He liked it down here.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Don't do that again -- ok, Lex?"

"Mmmm." Lex was curled up next to Clark, up against his chest. Felt like they were both lying in a soft bed.

"I mean it. You really hurt yourself there, really badly. Way worse than... are you even listening to me?"

"Mmmm..." Lex really, _really_ liked it here. He snuggled up into Clark a little more.

Ahhh. Just perfect.

"...Are you sure he's awake?" Clark sounded a little aggrieved.

"Yes," said an unfamiliar male voice. Lex hoped it would go away.

_::I am not going away.::_

...wait, that was familiar. Somehow.

And in his head.

Lex blinked his eyes open, feeling like all the hairs on his head were standing straight.

If he had hair.

Which he didn't.

\--Ok, goosebumps then. Lots and lots of goosebumps.

Lex felt more than heard a mental chuckle.

He batted out a fist, swinging.

Missed.

Rrgh.

"Go 'way. 'n stay out my head. 't's _my_ head," Lex grumbled, glaring upwards and sideways and around at nothing because he wasn't sure where, exactly, he needed to glare.

He heard a verbal chuckle this time and zoomed in on it, shoving himself upright.

He regretted it instantly, as he lost Clark's warmth.

He cursed and dove back down to snuggle back up against Clark again and try to retrieve that ever-present everywhere-warmth, closing his eyes and grabbing on with both fists, and he heard another chuckle. But at this point he didn't fucking care -- Mr. Chuckle could go to hell, goddamnit, so long as he got to keep his oh-so-very-wonderfully-warm Clark.

"Lex?" Clark sounded confused for some reason.

"You feel warm, to him."

"He feels warm, period. End stop. No qualifiers necessary." Lex wanted his guns back. He wanted to shoot the cop by the door.

Fucking cops with their fucking telepathy should stay out of his fucking head.

"You're welcome."

"Fuck you. I didn't invite you into the house of my mind."

"Only because there were no doors or window shutters left to keep anyone out."

...That didn't sound good at all.

"You did something," Lex accused slowly, cracking open his eyes to glare at the cop. Then he frowned as he tentatively felt around the insides of his own head. It wasn't perfect, or even good, but...

It was better than it had been.

Before he'd tried that bullshit with Tess, anyway. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd been thinking. If he had been thinking.

Stupid fucking psychosis-inducing meteor rock.

"Please tell me that crap is out of my system, Clark," Lex said, dropping his head against Clark's chest and closing his eyes again.

"Uh..." He could almost feel Clark mentally switching gears, higher up in the atmosphere. "Not quite yet. Getting there. Sorry."

Lex made a noncommittal noise to this not quite so welcome information.

Truth was better than fiction, though.

And yes, it had been unlikely that he'd somehow managed to sleep for a week straight with Clark by his side, but a guy could dream, couldn't he?

"Who's the telepathic jerk by the door?" Lex asked, not really wanting to know, but needing to know, which is why he had sucked it up and asked for the knowledge anyway.

"Um..." Clark nearly vibrated with indecision and uncertainty. It didn't feel so great.

Lex was about to withdraw the question when the man spoke up. _::I am J'onn J'ones, but you may call me the Martian Manhunter.::_

"...You hunt Martian Men?" That seemed a little... Ahab-ish. Were there Great White Martians?

There was a long pause.

 _::I am a Martian Man,::_ the voice by the door finally replied.

Lex's eyes binked open. He turned that one over in his head a few times. After a while he said, "That must get complicated."

That garnered him another chuckle.

"Shouldn't you be on Mars?" he asked peevishly.

_::Shouldn't you be on Earth?::_

"What? I _am_ on Earth!" Lex said, sitting up again and, damnit, couldn't Clark just sit up with him? Lex splayed a palm across Clark's arm, but the minor tactile contact was hardly enough.

The bastard was smiling at him.

"What else did you do to my head?" Lex demanded.

_::Not much. Just fixed a few things.::_

A trickle of fear slid down Lex's spine. "Define 'not much.' Define 'fixed'. Define _'a few'_."

"Lex?" And _now_ Clark sat up, but now he was also looking _alarmed_ , glancing between Lex and the cop. "Wait. What are you talking about? What do you mean 'fixed'?!" he demanded from the dark-skinned cop. "You promised me--! You said you were only going to help him help himself, not go in and--!"

" _What?_ " Lex interrupted, startled.

Clark was glancing between Lex and the cop, and was nearly vibrating with worry. It made his back molars ache. It made him want dive into his arms and under the waves again. "...Clark--"

" _What did you do?!?_ " Clark hissed out at the cop, swinging out an arm and scooping Lex in close, protectively.

Lex didn't really mind that in the least. He let his head fall against Clark's shoulder and relaxed completely. He'd gotten what he'd wanted. Very close-proximity to Clark. He lost himself in the sensation of him gladly.

Words and words and more words. Like shifting sand and dapple lights-over-shadow far above. Lex didn't care.

He _did_ care when he felt a shove away, pushing him farther out away from the warmth. He growled and tried to pull himself back in close again.

"Lex? ...What's wrong with him?" he heard faintly.

Soft, half-heard response of words, and words again. Queries, rebuttals, something else. Still didn't really care.

And then, oh, and then! And then Lex felt a gentle tug and, oh dear god, he'd thought the deep, the warmth, that it had been good before...

It had been nothing compared to _this._

Surrounded. Completely and utterly. Filled him up, every last little bit, crevice, and hole. Drained in and _in_ and _**in**_ , and all those places he'd thought would never fill were filled. All the deep-burning fires of anger and hate and fury and and pure distilled self- _loathing_ that would never go out were _drowned_ out, and then washed away as if they never were.

Up and up and in and up, and then, oh then, it started to bleed out into the things that _hadn't_ been empty and...

Lex sighed happily as he floated, and floated, and _became_ the sea.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex slowly came back to himself, and it almost hurt to _**be**_ again. Himself, again.

...If that was the sort of experience the weak-minded tended to have when they let themselves be subsumed by those crazy-ass 'spiritual' cults, Lex could fully understand the attraction.

Clark wasn't there.

Lex sat up and searched about, starting to feel a little frantic.

He was a junkie looking for a fix, and he knew it, and he didn't care.

Clark... he couldn't do that. To him. He couldn't do what he did, go and do that and then _leave him all alone and never come back oh god when was he coming back?!?_

Clark was the _only_ person he'd ever known that it hadn't **hurt** to be around sometimes, and-- and--

And...

...

Lex held his head in his hands and shivered, curling in on himself.

_No._

That was wrong.

It didn't hurt to be around people. Not like _that_. Not like he was feeling _now._ This wasn't something...

He wasn't a freak. Not really. He didn't... feel things from people all the time. It was just the serum. Just this one time. He wasn't... This wasn't...

It was just the one time!

That was _wrong._

_**That was a lie.** _

Lex curled in on himself completely, into a tiny little ball, and began to whimper.

_\--make it stop make it stop make it stop--!_

Lex gasped and uncurled all at once. He realized he'd been crying and rocking.

He had no idea for how long.

The hand on his back was cool and dry and warm.

And Lex felt disconnected. From everything.

"What..." he whispered.

He craned his head and looked up at the cop.

 _::This is not a good place for you right now,::_ the Manhunter said. _::Come with me.::_

Lex came.

It didn't even occur to him to argue.

~*~*~*~*~*~

 _Bracelets should clink,_ Lex thought distractedly, as he lightly tapped together the ones at his wrists. _Shouldn't they?_ He was going to have to have them redesigned to clink. Them, and the collar.

 _Are they even working? Are they doing anything at all?_ He checked the lights along the bands. They looked powered, at least. He glanced up at the cop, wondering...

_::Not much. Not anymore. You're a rather strong empath.::_

Great. Not telepath. Empath. Not words. Emotions. His 'thing' couldn't even be something useful, like holding a conversation in somebody else's head. Typical. Ever and always a disappointment, even unto himself.

 _::Empaths are very useful,::_ he heard in neutral reply.

He didn't really believe it, but he didn't feel like arguing with a telepathic alien, either, so he simply shrugged it off.

_::Useful, and dangerous.::_

Lex blinked. That was ridiculous. The only person he was really dangerous to was himself. The backlash...

And he vaguely rememebered Clark saying something earlier about Tess not being hurt nearly as badly as he'd hurt himself. And being angry at Lex. And angry at _Tess_ , which had been interesting. And, of course, angry in general, as Clark was wont to do at times.

And now they were down in the morgue. ...Well, Lex had noticed that he'd liked death better than the alternative.

 _::The dead are generally quieter than the living,::_ the alien mindreader agreed.

"Good to know." Lex stopped for a moment, then asked, "What did you fix in me earlier?"

_::I didn't.::_

"You did _something_ ," Lex pressed, with a frown.

A mental sigh, then: _::I didn't; you did.::_

"...Come again?"

_::I 'nudged' you. I helped guide your hands. You didn't know how to do what you wanted to do. I did. I helped you to do what you were trying to do.::_

"That's... vaguely disturbing." _I don't even remember it._ Not that he could recall in any detail. It had all just been Clark, hadn't it? Mostly...

Lex had the barest recollection of dolphins-under-the-waves of Clark's sea. Slight nosings. Proddings. "I'm not even sure I know what I was trying to do."

_::You have good instincts.::_

"But you aren't going to tell me what you -- I -- did."

Silence.

Well, shit.

Lex decided to try this from another angle. "What are we doing here?"

_::Getting away from the noise.::_

"Why was my hospital bed not a good place for me?"

_::Because the last person to use that bed was bipolar and suicidal, and Clark was not there to drown it out.::_

Oh.

_Oh._

Well, shit.

That... actually made him feel a little better. Even though he probably should have felt worse at what that indicated about his complete and utter lack of control at the moment. ...Not that he'd ever had any particularly spectacular emotional control _before_ , as his ex-father had been perfectly happy to point out to him with smug superiority on more than one occasion.

But Lex was forgetting something, and bad manners were not something to which he ascribed.

"Ah, thank you. For getting me out of there, and..." Lex trailed off, and frowned as he began to pay closer attention to a small something that had been nagging at him for while now. "You're doing something right now, aren't you..." he said slowly.

_::Yes.::_

"Mind telling me what?" Lex asked cooly, sliding his hands into his pants pockets.

_::I am currently shielding you from most of the rest of the world. What you would be able to sense of it.::_

"Most? Not all?"

_::No.::_

"Why not?"

_::Because if I shielded you from everything you could sense, you would panic.::_

"...I would?"

_::Yes.::_

"I don't believe you."

The cop gave him a _Look._ It was a very good one. Well-practiced.

"Do it anyway," Lex demanded.

Lex was on his knees on the floor, babbling and crying, in mere seconds.

And then it stopped. ...Or, rather, _started again_ , depending on one's point of view.

But, considering that, from Lex's perspective, the world had dropped out from under him and replaced with a cold, empty void of nothingness, everything around him still existing in his sight and smell and touch but in _reality_ no longer **existed**...

"jesus-fucking-christ-what-the- _fuck--!_ " Lex shrieked under his breath, hands shaking.

Worse than waking up and Clark suddenly not being there.

Far, far worse.

 _Beyond_ worse.

"W-why?" Lex stammered. "How?"

...But he already _knew_ , didn't he?

"Oh, oh god," he shuddered. "It's on. It's _always on_. I'm-- I'm--" _I'm a freak, and I didn't even **know**..._

All those times, when his father had hurt people, and Lex _couldn't comprehend_...

All those times, when he'd been bullied by Oliver and his 'peers', and Lex couldn't understand how or why they could just _stand_ there and look down on him and _laugh_...

All those times, when people did the most horrible, horrendous _things_ , and he couldn't understand why they didn't _hurt_ , why they didn't at least _hurt_...

He'd always thought, _What is wrong with the world?_

When really, he should have been asking, _What is wrong with **me**?_

Lex shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself.

And he found that that wasn't good enough, not nearly enough sensation after the lack, and he slammed his palms down flat onto the floor.

He felt cool hard surface, and _concrete_ was _strong, durable, oddly weak to crumbling, minute internal spiderwebbing cracks_ , and a _solid_ feel of _age-old rock_ that had been pulverized into its making. Water and limestone in the mix, that had their own almost silky-feeling 'flavor' to them. Coarser sand, that grated on him ever since that one awful hell-like summer stranded on the island.

Concrete _felt_ like **concrete** should.

To him.

He could never forget that, now.

And as Lex panted and sweated and slowly recentered his mental self, he started to rethink his proclivity to touch. Especially 'warm' things, like wood, that... well... He'd never _met_ a wood he didn't like. Wood felt a little like trees, and the faded and fading life in them seemed a bit more solid and sturdy after they'd died and dried and been restructured and remade, but all the stronger for it, yet still holding a faint echo of the warmth of sunlight and summertime within them.

...There was probably an unfortunate metaphor in there somewhere.

Glass used to be nice, all smooth with no hard, sharp edges. Lots of surface area, to let the warmth of sandy beaches slowly wick up his fingertips as he stroked it. He'd thought it rather nice. Right up until after what had happened with Helen. He'd switched to plastics after that, gritty and grimy as the processed oils had felt sliding across his skin.

But no man was an island unto himself, and while Lex generally felt more comfortable alone and surrounded with 'nice' things than around actual (live) human company, he _hated_ being alone and isolated, and sought out meaningful connection with other intelligent beings.

People, on the other hand... he'd spent a long time learning not to flinch under other people's touches. No matter how much he didn't like them.

Clark had been the exception.

Lionel... he'd _never_ liked his father's touches. They always hurt. Always. Too cold and removed, or blisteringly hot, in anger and...

And suddenly his wanting, desiring, needing -- _craving_ \-- his father's approval took on a whole new dimension of meaning for Lex.

He felt physically ill.

He needed Clark.

He needed Clark _badly_.

Where was Clark?

_::I told him he should not be here for this. It would be counter-productive::_

"Fuck you," Lex spat back bitterly, wiping away tears. How could being comforted and loved _possibly_ be a bad thing?!

He wanted to rip and tear the fucking know-it-all alien cop to shreds.

So he did.

Or tried to.

Didn't go so well.

Hurt him more than it hurt the alien.

Didn't hurt the alien at all.

Lex ended up gasping on the floor, on his back, feeling like he'd run _himself_ over with a truck. Twice.

_::Are you done?::_

"No," Lex gasped, levering himself upright and slowly forcing himelf to stand.

_::Good.::_

Lex blinked in confusion and almost staggered in place.

"You... want me to come at you again?" Lex asked uncertainly. Was attempting to attack it giving the Manhunter some opening to get further into Lex's mind and...

Christ, that was stupid, the blasted alien could probably-- was probably doing whatever the hell it wanted to his mind right now.

_::No.::_

"How the hell would I know?!" Lex shot back.

_::How would anyone?::_

Lex stared.

_::They don't. You wouldn't, though perhaps you would have a better chance at such than others.::_

Jesus fucking Christ.

"So... you're just going to..." Lex bit down on hysterical laughter, and the urge to run. What good would it do?

The Manhunter sighed. _::No. Clark desires that I not do such a thing, and I am his to command now, not Jor-El's.::_

That... was a little disturbing.

No, Lex took it back -- that was a _lot_ disturbing.

This was also getting him nowhere. "What are we doing down here?" Lex finally asked.

_::Training.::_

"Training what?"

_::You. Your abilities. You need it. At least the basics.::_

"What, no advanced courses?" Lex snarked.

_::No. You are dangerous enough as it is. I already do not agree with Kal-El's assessment, but I trust that, being older and stronger and wiser than you, as well as more experienced and more learned, I will be able to swat you like an insect if you attempt anything truly disruptive.::_

Well. That both made Lex want to bristle and physically pound the damn alien into the ground, and plan ways to accomplish just the damn opposite of what the alien thought it was capable of, then inflict such a fate on the alien in a bloody mental pre-emptive strike. ...It was also oddly comforting.

The latter made Lex question his own sanity a bit.

_::Truly? Kal-El seemed to think that you would find the idea of having no force able to stop you highly disturbing.::_

"Stop me from what?" Lex said uneasily. Clark had said...? "Clark knows what you're going to train me in?"

_::Clark requested it, against my better judgment and voiced concerns.::_

Oh, _well_ , if _Clark_ thought it was a good idea when the "older" and "more learned" alien hunter of men didn't...

Pfft. Who was he kidding!

_::Not me.::_

Lex rolled his eyes. He also made his mental eye-roll go in the opposite direction, and watched the alien mindreader frown.

_::I will be training you in two techniques. They are the groundwork for all else, and should be sufficient for your daily mental sanity.::_

Right. Straight into the lesson, then. Lex kept his eyes on the Martian as it circled Lex slowly, but Lex stayed standing where he was.

_::As you progress, you will need to change the way you use and implement these techniques. You may think of it as... if you were learning martial arts, starting from a young age. As you grow and mature, your center and balance will change, and so you must make adjustments accordingly. Similarly will you need to change your techniques as you improve your agility, better your flexibility, and gain more strength.::_

That... sort of made sense. Lex wondered if the Manhunter had ever taught someone else these techniques before.

_::No. Human or Martian, you are my first pupil. Now pay attention!::_

Lex blinked.

_::Your mind wanders. This is not safe to do until you have learned the techniques to such instinctual use as for them to be as natural as breathing.::_

"Yes, sensei," Lex said with a slight smirk, because he was pretty sure that someone had been watching too many eastern martial arts films, and it wasn't--

"OW!" Lex yelped, wrapping his hands around the back of his head.

He was even more shocked when he realized that it hadn't been a physical blow, no matter how light the 'slap' had been.

_::Focus!::_

"I am _used_ to being able to think about multiple things at a time! And it's really fucking hard to concentrate when the world is trying to bleed into my head!" Lex protested.

The Martian stopped circling him, and leaned forward, staring into Lex's eyes with a frown.

Lex frowned right back, meeting the Manhunter's steady gaze, and tried not to flinch when he felt a whisper of _something_ like spiderwebs floating through his mind.

The Martian's frown deepened, and the feeling of spiderwebs-without-stickiness withdrew.

 _::You are correct. You think on many levels.::_ The Manhunter frowned a little more. _::This will make things more difficult.::_

" _So_ sorry I'm not a moron," Lex rejoined sarcastically.

The Martian was not impressed.

"What two techniques did you say you were going to be teaching me, before I so rudely interrputed?" Lex prompted mock-innocently. He was fine with an antagonistic relationship with the alien; none of his teachers had ever liked him, after all, so why should this one be any different?

The Martian stared at him for a moment, then sighed softly and continued. _::First, I will teach you how to shield yourself against the world around you. In this way, you will be able to partially or totally block everything you would otherwise externally feel.::_

"Why would I want to completely cut myself off?" Lex asked, still feeling horrified from his earlier reaction to the experience not too long ago.

_::You may find a time at which it becomes necessary.::_

From the 'tone' of the Martian's 'voice' in Lex's head, however, Lex had a strong feeling that the Martian hoped that things would never come to that for him. Which was a little odd, because Lex wasn't used to people feeling concern for him -- except maybe Clark, who actually cared about him, so there was an explanation there. This total stranger worrying about his well-being? Made him feel a little... uneasy.

He realized he was garnering another long look from the Martian. "Right. I assume that this 'shielding' is what you are doing for me currently?"

_::Yes.::_

Lex nodded once to himself. That would be a useful thing to be able to do for himself, on his own, one way or another. Especially given his revelation that even after the serum wore off, he'd still be having... 'issues'...

"What is the second technique?"

_::The ability to shield selectively, to block out only part of the world.::_

Lex didn't quite see the difference between that and the first technique for a moment, until he did.

_...To block out only some things, but not others? A selective filter?_

His head came up abruptly, eyes wide. "Are you telling me that you can teach me how to stop the backlash?"

_::Yes.::_

"And Clark is ok with this?" Lex's voice went up an octave, and it wasn't a conscious affect.

_::Yes. In fact, he requested it specifically.::_

...Despite his better judgment. Despite voiced concerns. _Well, shit._ "Does Clark actually _understand_ what I could do if I--?"

_::Yes. In fact, he was able to give a rather long list of actions that he thought you would be able to take once you have mastered this skill. He didn't think any of them likely.::_

Lex swallowed, hard. This... was insane. Manipulating someone's thoughts was one thing, but their emotions? Without any backlash, or any true immediate negative consequence on Lex's part? He'd taken biochem as a major. He knew about brain chemistry and the psychology of human thought... or knew enough. Emotions were motivation. Emotions were the underlayer to every action, every decision that every single human being in existence ever made. They were the cheat code to existence. _No-one_ was entirely logical, not most of the time -- not even some of the time. And because of cognitive dissonance, when people acted in one way once, when it ran counter to their usual thought processes... they changed the way they _thought_ far more often than the way they acted, to make everything _fit_. Manipulate someone's emotions once, and sit back and watch them change their own thought processes to match that one-time action that hadn't even really been under their control...? He could literally _remake_ people. _Easily._ And... _they wouldn't even know it._

The thought made him ill.

Especially since he had no doubt in his mind that the temptation would be...

Who the hell could possibly stop him?

If Clark tried...

...Lex could feel Clark. If he could feel Clark, he could most certainly influence him. Even if he couldn't manipulate his emotions directly, with the level of feedback he could get just by knowing what impact his _words_ had and how, he could--

 _Empaths are dangerous,_ the alien had said.

Lex shivered.

_::No.::_

"...No?" Lex whispered.

_::I would consider that disruptive. I would stop you and set things right. Back, as they were.::_

The wave of relief that crashed over him left him weak-kneed.

_::How interesting. Kal-El was correct.::_

Lex's breathing went shallow.

"What--?"

_::You do seem to find the idea of a lack of oversight and accountability highly disturbing. Kal-El had thought you had seemed too agreeable with the idea of him acting as a unstoppable check on your power and actions as a nemesis. It appears he was correct in his determination.::_

It took a moment to register. Then Lex coupled _that_ disturbing little sentiment with the alien's now-obvious blatant manipulations -- earlier, and again now -- and his eyes went wide.

"You son of a bitch!!" he screamed, aiming a punch at the alien's head.

The alien caught his wrist, then brought his other hand up to encircle Lex's neck.

Lex froze.

The alien didn't move further, and neither did he, breathing heavily in shock.

And then Lex's eyes widened even further when he realized that the alien's touch _didn't hurt._

Lex gave a strangle cry and pulled away, staggering back a few steps. He slide a hand up to his throat as his eyes filled with tears, because that wasn't possible, that couldn't be possible. Clark was the only one who ever... who never... the only one who didn't feel... --That couldn't be possible! Unless...

"You're lying to me," Lex accused, voice shaking.

The Martian looked at him with sad eyes and Lex shook his head and gave a frustrated yell as he backed into the wall of the mortuary. He slammed into the cold steel 'drawers' and felt rows and rows of death and the dead behind him. But faced with the Martian at his front, and the cold dead at his back, and given a choice...

He tightened his grip around the oddly-spaced handles at his fingertips and leaned into the cool metal.

That didn't stop the Martian from stepping forward and lifting Lex's chin with a hand.

It still didn't hurt.

"Liar," Lex whispered.

_::Alexander--::_

" _Liar!_ " Lex repeated, with more feeling. He brought his hands up and struggled at the light, yet immoveable, grip.

"Alexander Luthor, I have no reason to hurt you."

The verbal telling of it, coupled with the mental echo, unmade him. Lex knew truth when he heard it.

"W-why?" he asked, tears running silently down his cheeks, and he too lost to care.

The Martian Manhunter stared at him for a long time, then merely sighed in return, and caressed his cheek softly.

"You have been done a great disservice, and a great harm, young Luthor, and neither were deserved."

~*~*~*~*~*~

The lessons passed in a blur, once he had calmed down. He didn't really like to think of the latter, it was embarrassing. The former he wished he could make more sense of, but it had been mostly inside his head, and harder to keep track of, somehow, because of that.

_Possibly because my mind is a complete **wreck** at the moment._

He wasn't really great at either technique the Martian had showed him. Not yet. Practice would help, and practice, at least, he knew -- with a more solid _knowing_ \-- how to do.

Lessons over (ominously "for now"), Lex was left to his own devices. Tired and starving, Lex made his way back upstairs, got himself some so-called "food" from the hospital cafeteria (yuck), and then headed back upstairs to his room. He mentally poked around a bit at the powered restraints, and tried to slot his own 'shields' into place 'underneath' them to cover some of the gaping 'holes' that were there. It was odd, because he would have thought that the meteor-suppressing restraints should have been working on him better... but then they'd never had any telepaths or empaths or, well, purely mental types to test them out on. In retrospect, it was entirely possible that there might be something deficient in the general design of the things that could not yet properly account for the class of meteor freak that he was.

"Sucks to be me," he muttered. ...And yet, not.

He briefly wondered if Chloe's original power set could have counted as similar, before she had burned it out, however she had. Healing and some sort of empathy usually seemed to go hand-in-hand; she and Cyrus Krupp had both been examples of that. Lex had seemed to end up with a bastardized version, however, as his own immune system wasn't exactly the sort of healing that could be externally applied. ...Then again, his 'empathy' certainly could be, so maybe it was a true reversal of that which was usually seen, in a sense.

Hopefully he wouldn't end up in a coma like the Krupp boy if he ever overextended.

He wondered if Chloe had had any side effects like that, before her healing ability had been inexplicably replaced by a radically high intelligence, however that had occurred.

With some food in him, and the start of better mental shields to better handle he world at-large, Lex was feeling almost himself. Thus, he had been moving around the corner right by the nursing station for the floor at a reasonably fast clip when he found himself staggering backwards right before he ran into someone -- Conner -- he'd felt the approach a mere split-second before actual physical contact.

"Dad!" Conner said brightly, right before his enthusiasm dimmed and he suddenly looked worried. "Um, I mean..." And now the boy looked nervous.

Lex sighed. "Conner... I'm fine." _More or less._ "You didn't do anything wrong, earlier."

"--But I hurt you!" Conner blurted out, looking embarrassed, horrified, and more than a little bit guilty. Lex sstifled a sigh at the last.

"That's really not your fault, Conner," Lex told Conner, shaking his head. "How I perceive people's emotions has more to do with me than with them, it seems," he added, remembering a bit of what the Manhunter had tried to explain during Lex's lessons. Apparently, everything really _was_ relative, when it came to emotions. "Though I suppose I visualize my own self-styled brand of love as a lightning strike, or whatever I can manage as such. I think I perceived you and I as a bit too alike, in that regard, and it caused... issues. What happened was as much my own feedback, that I wasn't allowing to connect to you, as it was yours that I was picking up on, it seems. Luckily, I've known for awhile that my 'love' is no good for anyone, so I was able to prevent any of my own emotions from cycling back into you," Lex ended with a self-deprecating smile because... lightning? He had very personal issues with electricity and electrical shocks. "No good" was an understatement of the highest order, and really wholly unnecessary when even a normal lightning strike hitting a person could be considered a hazard.

It was only upon being confronted with Conner's look of absolute horror that Lex realized the real problem with being able to mentally converse with aliens that he couldn't lie to, and thus might as well completely be open with -- that he'd have a hard time remembering when he needed to pick back up the lying, cheating, and deceiving he had to do with the rest of the planet, like he was supposed to, in order to get along with everyone else in the world at-large.

_...Oops._

Lex cleared his throat lightly. "So, yes." He paused awkwardly. "Not your fault, and I think I'll just get back to my room now, if you don't--"

Lex bit down on a yelp on the 'static shock' he felt as Conner grabbed his arm as he tried to slide past. Then he saw Conner look angry and ashamed of himself as his hybrid-clone-son dropped his arm almost as quickly.

"Conner..." Lex reached out a hand towards him, and then checked the motion as Conner flinched away. Lex pulled his fingers back into a fist and had to settle for forcing himself to stand still, only somewhat nearby.

Conner watched him warily.

Lex looked away first, dropped his hand and felt horribly tired. _This isn't going to work. Why did I ever even contemplate thinking that the barest possibility even existed that I could ever...?_ \--Oh, right. **Clark.** _Damn him for getting my hopes up. Again._ The comedown was always a bitch. He really should have known better by now.

Too tired to set things in motion now, one way or another -- _Christ, pick a side and a result, and stick to it, Luthor!_ \-- Lex decided to wait until after he'd gotten some rest to worry about what he'd need to do or say to send Conner running back into Clark and Martha's open arms, to thoroughly burn that bridge to ash and smoke and dust. It really would be better for the boy in the long run... wouldn't it?

"Wow...!" Conner said, starry-eyed and looking past him, and the breathless reverence in his tone had Lex automatically turning to see--

Lana.

Lex's heart stopped.

The world stopped.

...And then everything started back up again.

Lex grabbed Conner and bodily dragged the boy behind him.

"Go!" Lex said, his eyes not leaving Lana as he shoved Conner towards the entryway to the hall behind him, because he did _not_ like the way Lana was eyeing his son.

"What? D- Lex??" Conner said, in confusion Lex could feel.

"Go! NOW!" And in a moment of pure insanity, he added: "Go to Tess! Stay with her!"

Too late. Lana had blinked to existence right in front of him.

Behind him, even through the power suppressors and his fledgling shields, Lex felt the pain roll off of Conner in waves.

"Wh-what? ...What's--?" He felt Conner stagger, and it really spoke to him that Conner had had no basis of comparison for the feel or effects of meteor rock on his person prior to this moment.

"Conner, _go!_ "

"Oh, you named it?" Lana said smoothly. "Your freakish tool?" Her hands reached out to grab Lex by the neck, and she was not nearly so gentle with him as the Martian had been. "You know, I don't ever remember you naming your cars... Was that another secret you kept from me?" she added lightly, lifting him off of his feet, and how the hell was she-- oh, fuck, what was she wearing, five-inch platform boots?!?

Lex futilely wrapped his hands around her wrists as he dangled in mid-air, tried shoving a feeling of molten lava at her and didn't even get a twitch.

_Shit._

He dropped his shields -- no longer helpful in any way at this point with the skin-to-skin contact, it wasn't keeping out her burning rage-fueled hatred one whit -- realized the problem was that he was fighting fire with fire, and shoved cold icy vengeance at her instead.

She yelped and dropped him post-haste.

Hah.

Lex staggered and swayed, somehow keeping his feet.

"Didn't expect that, now, did y--" Lex gloated too soon.

He collapsed to the floor as the effects of super-speed removal of the neck, wrist, and ankle bracelet power suppressors being ripped off of him caught up with him, and the world swirled about him and roared in without mercy or ending.

"Kkkkk--" and then Lex gasped a breath in as he instinctually got part of a shield up. _Th-thank god f-for practice._ He bolstered it, pouring in pure willpower, trying to shore up his pitiful mental defenses that he had, in that earlier moment of sheer idiocy, let down.

He had no fucking clue what he was doing. Things kept leaking -- _leaking? hah! more like **pouring!**_ \-- in like a roaring dam bursting.

He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth, and tried again, and again, and again. He added layers upon layers -- because everything was like swiss cheese -- hoping the holes might not overlap enough, too much, long enough for him to...

Finally, he had enough of a mental defense perimeter going that he could keep up the cycle of shoring it up -- as it broke itself down -- in place with only part of his mental focus, and was able to focus outward and start trying to pay attention to the physical world again.

He found himself eternally grateful that effort at the speed of thought worked at a wholly different timescale when compared to the rest of the world, even though it well and truly skewed and screwed with his time-sense as a result -- he had actually only been out for a few seconds.

Lex slowly levered himself to his feet, 'covered' himself further in an outer layer of mental 'ice', and ran at Lana in a full body tackle as she stood over a familiar alien-human hybrid writhing on the floor.

Lana screeched as he hit her, and, not one to let an advantage go unused, Lex let physics do the talking for him -- he spun, ducked, and hauled Lana over a shoulder in a judo throw that had Lana tumbling end-over-end-over-ass-over-teakettle all the way across the room before she slammed into the far wall and came to a plaster-cracking halt.

Conner moaned as Lex helped him to his feet and shoved him down the hallway.

He was shaking by the time he was done with getting Conner to flee, little lightning-aftershocks leaving him twitching at random intervals, not to mention the echoes he'd felt from Conner of the aftermath of the meteor-rock induced pain and now-halted destruction of his cells and tissues.

Fuck, but Lana had some explaning to do, because this was unaccepta--

Lex spun away like a top and hit the floor hard.

He lay there panting for a moment, Lana's screeching echoing in his ears, and dear god he'd been lucky that he'd kept up the layer of 'ice', because he'd felt Lana flinch away even as she'd forced herself through to complete the hit. If Lana had gotten a good hold on him at speed...

Hell, if she actually stopped to think and applied any knowledge of physics at all, he could easily be a smear against a wall via the use of something so mundane as, say, the countertop from the nurses station, or one of the waiting room chairs. It wasn't as though she had to physially get close to him to hurt him, and inanimate objects wouldn't be stopped by an empathetic barrier in the least.

Not that Lex was about to start giving his homicidal attacker any bright ideas, mind, but the thought occurred.

Best to try and keep her too mad to be thinking clearly, then.

Speaking of which... "Clark?" Lex called tentatively at the ceiling. His 'Superman' ought to be able to hear him without the need for a yell, considering the 'super-hearing', right?

Lana laughed.

Lex slowly got to his feet, watching her warily. "Something amusing that I missed, Miss Lang?" he replied evenly, carefully, trying not to flinch or favor his side.

"Oh, you calling for Clark. As if he'd come." She smiled vapidly. "Even if he wanted to, he couldn't. He and the League are all very busy at the moment."

Lex found himself wishing all over again for his guns, for all the good they would do him.

"No-one is coming," Lana taunted as she paced towards him in a predatorial manner. "Not that anyone would do anything but help **me**." Her smile grew wider.

"Something satisfying about plans coming to fruition?" Lex asked mildly, backing up a step, trying to make it seem like something other than a retreat.

"No, just taking advantage of someone else's... mess." Given the way her eyes gleamed, his distancing maneuver had been recognized for what it really was.

"Which, no doubt, you knew about in advance, and simply failed to mention to anyone else."

Lana snarled. "So what? I hear something, that could just be a rumor anyway, and maybe I do something that will add to confusion on the streets. Who cares, so long as nobody gets hurt?"

"Somehow, I think Clark will care if Conner gets hurt. And Martha." Another step. She was gaining more than he was putting between them, but at least so far he'd been successful at stalling for more time. And the hospital staff had emptied out of the area.

"That thing isn't a person. They'll see, and they'll get over it."

"And if they don't?"

"Then I'll just have to be the bad guy for now. It's better than letting you get away with what you're planning! --How could you do that to him?!"

"Do what?" _And to who? --Clark?_ Lex was honestly curious at this point, though it could be entirely the case that adrenaline and the world fog were screwing with his priorities...

"Try and trap him like this! Using his and his mother's concept of family against them!"

Lex was really drawing a blank now. "I--" He stopped as he realized her meaning, and found himself speechless, because... Well, would it really do any good to try and explain that it had been Clark's idea to try and make him a part of Conner's life, when he himself was rather sure that it would probably work out to be a horrible idea? That he believed that he would end up hurting his son worse in the long-term if he tried to be a part of his life, than if he just... let go?

...But could Lex really do that?

Maybe. If he had to. If it would keep Conner safe from Lex himself, and all others that would hurt him. But with Clark saying that wasn't so...

But was that actually a real concern? Couldn't it also be possible that Conner could be in _more_ danger living outside Lex's sphere of influence than within? Lex wasn't the only person in existence who was capable of hurting Conner, physically, mentally, or otherwise -- especially with all the meteor rock about. And a lot of Lex's assumptions rested on the idea that Lex himself could hurt Conner without even trying, worse than anyone else ever could, even when he didn't want to. But if he got this mental crap under his control, and paid very close attention to Conner...

Actually, he'd be more capable of telling when Conner was in pain _now_ , wouldn't he?

He wouldn't be able to do _anything_ like that accidentally. He'd know right away, be able to stop and maybe even fix things...

Lex grew still as he realized that, really, the only stumbling block to a relationship with Conner lay in what he'd done in the past. But, if he turned over a new leaf, found someone else to do the dirty work -- someone trustworthy -- and washed his hands of the rest, then maybe...

Lana was at his throat again. Two hands 'better' than one.

\--Fuck!

 _Distracted! Shouldn't have--!_ Lex leaned back away from her and kicked out, hard. Donkey kick to the chest, backed up with a memory of a horse doing just that.

Lana coughed and dropped him a second time.

"You know you'll just corrupt him, Lex. It's him, or you," she said, coughing again, as Lex backed off. "But you'd never do the selfless thing, would you--?"

And that had him wincing away because--

"You're _lying_ ," Lex said in horror. "You'll just kill me, then him."

"Don't be ridiculous," Lana said, but he felt the taste of lies on the air and he backed away another involuntary step, shuddering. "I'll let him go if you just submit like you should have done a long time ago." Then she snarled at him, teeth clenched and upper lip curled up in a sneer. " _You should have stayed dead!_ " And oh, Lex could feel how badly she wanted that.

Lex nearly reeled away in shock. First she considered Conner to be a 'thing' to be disposed of, then suddenly spoke of him as a 'he' to be worried about? She went from dripping malice and hate, to deceit and lies, to devastating truth once again, whatever she felt was necessary to get whatever she wanted? _Was she this bad before? Have I been so blind, deaf, and dumb that I truly didn't see it?_ And when had she started wanting him dead? When had that changed?

"You-- what is _wrong_ with you?!" Lex demanded dizzily, feeling soul-sick.

And all pretense of civility dropped from her. "I am what you made me!" she shrieked, bending over, fingers bent into claws, face twisted and ugly in her fury and rage.

Lex couldn't help but wince away from the waves of caustic emotion pouring out of her now.

He tried pushing out, thickening the mental 'ice' layer further, not with cold vengeance and petty thoughts of revenge, but rather with memories of something far more brutal and elemental and impersonal, experienced first-hand -- the arctic snow in winter.

He grew it out far too easily, from a mere half-inch, to a foot or more.

And it helped, somewhat.

He was starting to slowly, but surely, find some mental balance, even without the limited help the restraints had afforded. Even with Lana's vicious attacks.

Lana flickered forward, then flickered back just as quickly when he felt her 'hit' the 'ice field', hissing at him. And then--

"You... you never loved me at all, did you?" she asked, her face crumpling suddenly in tears.

Lex's eyes widened, and he found himself physically jerked forwards as he felt a tug at him. A strong tug.

A strong _mental_ tug, which he couldn't help but respond to.

 _What the hell?_ Lex shivered, as he dug in his heels and leaned backwards against it. _What... What the hell was -- is -- **that**?_

And then Lex realized.

She was merely...

Changing tactics.

He put more effort into strengthening his mental shields.

He felt the feeling -- that tug at his heartstrings -- snap off suddenly, like slamming a door in someone's face would cut off the noise coming out of their mouth.

He staggered backwards and stared at her.

And then he got angry.

"You _bitch_. You bitch!" Lex growled, shaking uncontrollably, clenching his fists so hard his fingernails drew blood from his palms. _You played me like Desiree!_ he mentally shrieked, enraged beyond an ability to find words with the proper capacity for expressing himself.

He found himself in the almost untenable position of having to try to clamp down on the feelings raging inside him, because his own internal feelings were threatening to destabilize what little mental control he had left that was the only thing keeping out both Lana's influence and the psychic fog of his surroundings. That was keeping him relatively sane in the face of all the pain and hurt and noise, in the middle of the sick and dying in a hospital in the middle of a city full of grossly unhappy and generally selfish people.

"What the hell is going on--!" Lex heard an irate female voice call out, and then a gasped "... _Lana?!?_ " Lex's whipped his head around to see Tess standing out in the hallway

Conner was by her side.

" _I told you to go to her, not bring her here!_ " Lex shouted at Conner, panicking. Conner was supposed to go to Tess, Tess was supposed to ask for an explanation that Conner was supposed to give, and then Tess was supposed to get Conner **out of danger--!**

\--Right. Of _course_ that was where everything broke down. Tess would do anything to break Lex in half, even -- _especially_ \-- if it meant other people getting hurt in the process.

Temporary insanity on his part. He should've told Conner to run at top speed to _Martha_ , and to hell with the rest of this bullshit. _Fuck._

He opened his mouth to remedy his earlier fuck-up--

\--and found himself dazedly staring at the... floor? Ceiling? No, he was _on_ the floor, staring at some surface (did it matter?), and his right side hurt, along with his head. His vision was dark, until he had blinked a few times, and then it was just blurry.

He did not feel good.

Ice had crackled to pieces. Shields were leaking all over, in time with the throbbing of his head.

Lana was advancing on Tess and Conner.

With a great effort, Lex shoved off the short wall and staggered to his feet.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Tess was feeling much better after the mental makeover that J'onn had given her. She was still a bit leery about the idea of someone rooting around in her skull, but whatever he'd done had undone what Lex had been doing to her, the evil bastard. As if a knife in the gut hadn't been bad enough!

J'onn had also offered to... "help" her, but she'd declined in such a way that hopefully wouldn't result in him breaking into her skull to do whatever he'd been alluding to wanting to do.

It gave her the shivers.

All-in-all, she couldn't wait for her discharge from the hospital tomorrow. She wanted to get the hell out of there and be out on the move as fast as humanly possible. Timely rescues from Superman -- even out of the clutches of Lex Luthor himself -- notwithstanding, she worked much better on her feet as a moving target.

But when Conner tore into her room and started incoherently raving about a totally hot but completely crazy lady who hurt to be around, who was trying to kill Lex, she could barely make heads or tails of it.

Of course, watching someone kill her cruel and irredeemable half-brother was high on her list of 'fun things to do' -- especially after that shit with the mind blasts earlier, the freak -- so she let Conner help her out of bed and down the hallway for some reconnaissance.

That Conner wanted her help to stop the fight was, well, something they might have to have a talk about a bit later. She had no idea where he'd gotten the idea that Lex wasn't evil incarnate, but she and the League were going to have to set him straight on that count.

When they made it into the central waiting room area, the first thing Tess noticed was that (a) it was a mess and (b) almost completely deserted of people. Neither was a good sign.

At a first glance, Lex was still standing, which was annoying, up until Tess realized that he was swaying slightly, in a defensive-only pose, backing away slowly from his assailant... and wasn't wearing the power-suppressant bracelets.

And frankly, none of that made any sense at all, though the latter was the most alarming thing she'd seen all day.

"What the hell is going on--" Tess said, making her way further into the room, and then she came to a screeching halt as she realized exactly who Lex was fighting.

" _Lana?!?_ " Tess gasped. _Oh, shit._ She glanced back at Lex, who had noticed their arrival, now, and saw him go pale.

No, not just pale -- he went white as a sheet, staring past her.

" _I told you to go to her, not bring her here!_ " Lex shouted, and he looked to be in a full outright panic.

Tess nearly flinched backwards into Conner. What the hell was his problem? He was almost acting like... like... he was worried somehow about...

 _About **who** , exactly?_ Tess knew she was in no condition to fight; her presence or absence shouldn't make any difference to Lex's short-lived well-being, given Lana's current powerset, even if she didn't join in in ganging up on him. And it wasn't as though she was in danger of trying to stop Lana, or that Lex would care about what might happen to her if she tried.

Lex opened his mouth to say _something_ , but Tess never got to find out what because there was merely a blur and suddenly Lana was standing where Lex had been, cursing softly, while Lex was...

...across the room, crumpled against the side of the nurses station, with a slight smear of blood down the wall where his head must have impacted. He wasn't moving.

Tess stood there looking on in shock. She knew she should be enjoying the sight of a thoroughly-beaten Lex Luthor more, but something was really wrong here.

Then again, Lana had always unnerved her. Especially after she'd stolen the Prometheus Mark II skin prototype.

Tess refocused on Lana and shivered at the look that the woman was sending her way.

Then her blood ran cold when she realized that that killing gaze wasn't directed at _her_ , it was directed at someone behind her. ...And Conner was behind her.

Suddenly, things started making more sense.

...except for the part about Lex actually giving a damn about Conner -- about someone other than himself. That was really fucking with her worldview.

But, if Lex really had been about to yell at Conner to run, it was too late now. Lana had a shit-ton of Kryptonite radiation embedded in her skin-suit, and he wouldn't have enough of a head start from where he was to keep out of her range, given Lana's own running speed.

"Lana, I haven't seen you in awhile. How have you been?" Tess heard herself say. _Oh god, I have a death wish._

"I'll be better once that thing is dead."

Tess heard Conner whimper slightly as Lana strode forward, one slow and torturous step at a time. "What thing?" Tess asked, pretending ignorance.

"That." Lana pointed at Conner, who was backing up slowly, and starting to double over in pain.

" 'M not a that," Conner said unsteadily, sounding like a really young kid.

Tess did not grimace; she put on her best poker face, instead.

"Lana, I think you might have been misinformed--" Tess started, taking a step to the side and putting herself directly inbetween Lana and Conner.

 _What the hell are you doing?!?_ her sanity screamed at her.

Lana came to a halt.

And Tess watched with horror and Lana shifted her gaze back to her again, in the exact same way that she had right before she'd informed Tess at the mansion that she'd _so_ like to be friends, and get along. Just so long as Tess stayed out of her way. With the casual benevolence one would expect from an ancient old-world goddess, because they'd both known that if she'd objected, that Tess couldn't have done a damn thing about it.

Still couldn't, in fact.

So Tess really didn't like it when Lana tilted her head slightly, and looked and Tess like Tess was some odd sort of animal, and then said, incredulously, "You think _I_ have been misinformed?"

Tess swallowed hard and nodded, a small nonoffensive smile plastered across her face.

"Tess, that thing is part of Luthor's plot," Lana said smoothly, reasonably. "He's trying to use it to control Clark. It's all a setup."

Tess blinked at her. Thought that through for a moment. Then said:

"So, Lex made everybody believe that he'd gotten blown up, started the cloning project, set things up so that only Lx-15 would survive the destruction of the lab that Zod put through, and that I would find Lx-15 and get him out alive?"

Lana nodded.

"And then he knew Lx-15 would escape and run away from me, and that mirror-Lionel would end up in our world, and then he masterminded mirror-Lionel's machinations on Alexander to send him back to Clark and myself, and for me to find the vial of Clark's blood, that we didn't know was his?"

Lana nodded.

Tess skipped over the part where she had nearly killed Alexander with a dose of cyanide before he became Conner, which, frankly, had probably been a very near-thing, because Alexander hadn't had invulnerable skin earlier that afternoon.

"And then he masterminded mirror-Lionel's second attempt, this time on Conner, and how that would play out in bringing Conner closer into the Kent family, and a closer relationship with Clark?"

Lana nodded.

"And then Lex masterminded, completely in advance and prior to his mindwipe, my finding, obtaining, and using the neurotoxin on him, and the actions of the crazy labtech getting ahold of another blood sample from Superman and injecting Lex with it to get his memories back, and his being saved from total system failure just in the nick of time by his usual doctors that had had to be flown in from all over because they hadn't been ready for him, and how all this would have Clark somehow feeling... bad for him? And knowing without a doubt that Clark would end up deciding that Lex should have Conner in his life?"

Lana nodded.

In point of fact, Tess had heard third-hand that Clark's insistence had been ongoing even despite Lex's own supposed protests, which apparently had only made Clark try even harder -- and that really made no sense at all to Tess. She knew Kal-El was a glutton for punishment, but she seriously doubted that Clark would push something for Conner that he knew was bad for Conner. (Misguided, sure, but...)

"And, due to Clark's connection with Conner now from all his prior machinations, this would also mean Clark being drawn in further as well?"

Lana nodded.

"And this would lead to Clark having interactions with Lex that would leave Lex controlling Clark?"

Lana nodded.

_...And how exactly would that work, again?_

And then, before Tess could try to think of some sort of continuation to that that could possibly make sense, Lana said:

"It's the perfect plan."

Tess stared at her, aghast.

 _Perfect, are you kidding me?!_ ...Because, no. Just, no. That was the most batshit crazy idea she'd ever heard, and Tess had heard quite a few in her time, handling LuthorCorp and then the League.

As much as she hated to admit it, by this point Tess _knew_ how Lex approached things. Tess knew perfectly well that Lex didn't do convoluted subterfuge and secret-handshake plots that looked like they'd never work in a million years; he'd totally dismiss the thought of them because of the hundred-odd variables that would have to go right for things to come out the way they had. Lex didn't toss together shit that would look totally unconnected to any sane person; his plots didn't make a person feel like they were losing their mind trying to untangle their backtraces. He wasn't some shadowy behind-the-scenes puppetmaster!

Tess felt a serious headache coming on. _No, when Lex does things, he does them directly and through the use of overwhelming brute force and gross expenditure._ Because, as far as Tess had ever been able to tell, through her first interactions with him as a subordinate, and later when trying to wrest control of LuthorCorp from him, and then understand the leftover mess of the company after they'd all thought him dead and gone... _If there's something he wants to happen, he starts by first determining the result he wants, and then funding so many different projects that might get him there that he runs out of names for them._ And wasn't that the truth -- Christ, he'd worked his way through the greek alphabet, then moved on to constellations, and back again to greco-roman references, and had then ran out of those!

 _He throws a million different ideas at a problem to see what'll stick, what looks like it'll work best, and then picks the first two or three most useful candidates and runs them through the wringer, like some corporate-funded special-project version of natural selection. And then he just outright uses them!_ She'd been his executive assistant for a year; she knew full well how the bastard worked. The only subterfuge she'd ever known him to use was in keeping the research or the implementation itself under wraps so that no-one stopped it before it hit some completed process or quasi-useful result.

For all the good it ever did him. _The cameras he'd had installed in my eyes had been a good bad example of that,_ Tess thought angrily.

But despite that, a total _mind-fuck_ like what Lana was thinking of sounded more like something that, if anything... _hell_ , that-- that **mirror-Lionel** would do...

"Maybe it was Lionel," Tess blurted out, and if the stormy look of complete and utter hatred that crossed Lana's face at that pronouncement was any indication, that had been _entirely_ the wrong thing to say.

"It wasn't Lionel _\-- IT WAS LEX!_ " Lana shrieked at the top of her lungs, and Tess barely checked herself from taking an involuntary step backwards. "It was Lex! It's ALWAYS been Lex! He is **evil** and needs to be stopped!"

"I think you did that already, Lana," Tess said slowly, nervously, pointedly glancing over at his prone form on the floor.

"It's not enough! He programmed that _thing_ with god-knows-what orders! I'm sure of it," Lana said hotly, glaring in Conner's direction as if she could see him through Tess' torso.

"Lana, we've had J'onn go through Conner's brain with a fine-toothed comb." Mental touch. Whatever. "Twice. There's nothing there that--"

"Then he's in on it! He used to work with Lionel!"

Tess blinked at her and her breath caught. She felt her resolve starting to slip, under mention-of-Lionel-induced paranoia.

"That's..." Tess couldn't really defend against that. He was an alien, an outsider, and a mindcontrolling menace who, at times, seemed amoral at best, even to _her_. He did whatever was asked of him, for whomever he worked under.

...as far as appearances went, anyway. He'd supposedly worked for Jor-El, Martha, and Clark, in turn, but Lionel had been working for Jor-El at one point, too, and who was to say that J'onn didn't have his own agenda? How hard would it be for him to tweak the minds of those he 'worked with' in such a way that the 'orders' they gave were exactly what he wanted to do, so that he could keep a close watch on any developing situation and...?

"You know I'm right, Tess," Lana said convincingly, and Tess hated that she was being manipulated.

"Then why not go after J'onn first, if he's the bigger threat? Conner could be salveageable," Tess said, and she ignored the disbelieving gasp behind her.

Lana frowned at her use of his name. "First things first. Besides, he's here, and a Luthor anyway. It'd be safer to do this right." She stepped in close, nose-to-nose with Tess. "You aren't going to get in my way, are you, Tess?" she smiled vapidly.

Tess breathed in shallowly and didn't say a word. If Lana didn't already know that Lionel was her father, Tess certainly wasn't about to enlighten her.

Lana's smile widened.

"...Tess?" she heard Conner say weakly.

Tess didn't move as Lana slowly stepped around her.

"Tess!" Conner cried out in shock and disbelief, and she closed her eyes and turned her head away.

It wasn't like Tess could do anything to stop her. She'd just die, too.

"No, please, I--" Conner started to beg, and he sounded so young, so frightened. Tess heard the thump of his body hitting the floor as he collapsed completely.

Tess blinked her eyes open and turned slightly, looking down at Conner. It wasn't as though he wasn't cursed with Luthor blood, as well -- from Lex himself, no less. Lana was probably right -- he'd almost certainly go bad, sooner or later.

Lana knelt down close, leaning over Conner, and Conner began to whimper from the floor, writhing in pain from the Kryptonite exposure, dark veins standing out from his skin.

At least if Tess survived, she could tell the others what had happened. It would be pointless for her to be killed alongside Conner, as well. What good was a sacrifice that gained nothing at all? She'd already risked much in trying to stall Lana for as long as she had.

It wasn't her fault. No-one could blame her.

She saw a flicker out of the corner of her eye and froze. She carefully did not look up at it, or move in any way, as Lana reached out her hand towards Conner.

Lex leapt at her from a crouch and grabbed Lana's head with both hands, snarling.

Lana yelped and shot to her feet, and Lex lost his grip, collapsed to the floor again, randomly twitching and groaning.

Lana turned and glared down at him, then hissed out a curse and kicked Lex in the chest as hard as she could, not holding back.

Tess heard something crack, and Lex slid about a foot and a half across the tile floor.

Tess blinked as she compared what had happened just now, to what had happened before.

She could almost hear Lana's frown as she looked down at Lex, trying to understand...

Tess let out a single, hysterical laugh.

Tess recovered first. As Lana turned back towards her, Tess hit her full-on in the face with a roundhouse kick. She smiled as she felt Lana's nose break under her boot heel and sent her flying backwards three yards.

Lana stumbled to her feet, whining and groaning, her flattened nose bleeding profusely and her eyesight dimmed by specks of her own blood.

Tess grinned maniacally and rushed her.

Lana had been taught well, but Tess was better. The ex-White-Knight-of-Checkmate blocked and spun, throwing elbows and fists to vital organs, flat hands and rigid fingers to pressure points, and it soon became apparent just how much Lana had gotten used to her near-invulnerability in fights. Tess broke both her knees in two savage kicks and knocked her out with a follow-up blow to the head, and the bitch went down, hard.

Tess dropped to her knees, grabbed Lana by a good handful of hair, and smashed her head into the floor three more times in rapid succession, just to make sure she wasn't faking unconsciousness.

She was panting slightly by the time she was done, but still smiling despite the pulled stitches she'd felt give out in the middle of the slugfest.

She really, really hated that smug bitch. Steal LuthorCorp technology out from under her nose and think she could get away with threatening her with it after, hm?

She looked up to see Conner watching her with eyes wide as saucers.

He was well out of the range of the radiation now, looking much better.

He was also cradling Lex's head in his lap.

Tess got up and walked over more carefully, holding her side with a hand and wondering how much internal bleeding she had this time.

"You..." Conner said unsteadily, obviously not knowing what to think of her actions.

Tess glanced down at Lex, who was twitching and muttering snatches of something unintelligible under his breath.

Conner drew him up further into his lap, as if to shield him from her.

Then he glanced down, worried.

"He's probably better off with you in his head than the rest of the building, Conner," she scoffed lightly. "Look, see?" she said, reaching down and touching him lightly.

Lex spasmed and shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.

"No -- _stop!!_ " Conner yelled, pulling Lex towards him and hunching over him protectively, though Tess had already pulled away.

She watched Lex collapse a little, looking a bit like death warmed over, and go very still, looking like any last vestige of his personality had drained out of his face and body.

And with any luck, that would be the end of him. Unshielded and subjected to enough stress and other people's crap running through his brain, maybe he'd end up comatose, or worse.

Sure, it might be slightly traumatic for Conner, but Lex had probably already been mostly gone before Conner had touched him again, and, well, she had several very good psychotherapists on staff at LuthorCorp who could help him through the... 'loss'.

"You--! He was worried about me!" Conner accused, his eyes tearing up. "He was trying to protect me! He's not bad!" he wailed in guilt and fear and confusion, clutching at his biological father. "You-- you have to help him!"

Tess blinked down at Conner, not sure how exactly he'd gotten from one concept to another in that line of thought.

"Please!"

Tess pulled a face, but nodded. It was undoubtedly too late anyway. Not after she'd thought the worst of her hate right at him. With the power boost from the serum still running wild in his system, and the complete lack of shielding...

It wasn't as though there was much chance that his mind would be salvageable. Just like she'd wanted in the first place. It would cost her nothing.

"All right, Conner," she said, walking off.

After the subsequent conversation she'd had with J'onn earlier about what had happened with Luthor, Tess had put in a call for an additional spare set of power restraints, just in case, before passing out for awhile in her hospital bed. At the time, only god knew what Lex might try to get up to in the meantime once J'onn had finished with him. By now, the package was probably not just on-route but in-building. She took her time tracking them down, but was still back in only minutes.

She sighed as she plopped down on the floor next to Conner, and winced at the sharp pain in her gut as she realized that she probably should not have let herself drop to her knees and hit so heavily.

She struggled a little with the locking mechanisms, and got the ankle and neck bracelets on with no small effort. She place _three_ bracelets on each arm -- one near the shoulder, two by the wrist -- because Lex had seemed to need to use his hands for his mind-manipulations earlier, and just one each obviously hadn't been enough. She thoroughly ignored the look Conner gave her, because it was _not_ overkill, and she'd rather be safe than in pain.

She used the remote activation device to switch them all on at once, and flinched away when Lex gasped in a breath and his eyes flew open.

"Dad!" Conner breathed out happily, hugging him close.

 _Shit,_ Tess grumbled to herself. She'd really hoped that he'd not survived that. Damnit.

"Wh-- Conn...?" Lex said thickly, not entirely all there. Tess's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sorry!" Conner said. "I'm so so sorry!"

"Hn? Wha-t? For... what?" Lex said, reaching up and patting at Conner's arm gently, and the movement looked haphazard at best.

Make that dazed, and confused, and not all quite there. Tess frowned, because she'd either expected him completely gone, or back with guns all-blazing. She'd never before seen Lex at less than his best -- or worst, depending on how you wanted to put it -- and this was just...

Pathetic.

Pathetic, is what it was.

"I'm sorry! That crazy lady, she hurt you, and, and--"

"...Conner?" Lex frowned hazily, and then he said, with no small concern, "Are you... all right?" as he struggled to push himself up and turned his head to get a good look at Conner, bringing up a hand to oh-so-gently touch Conner's cheek.

And the look on Lex's face was...

Tess sat there rigidly, poleaxed. She watched, as Conner stared down at Lex in stunned disbelief and then burst into tears.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> More later. Probably.
> 
> ^_^;;


End file.
